Living and dying with the choices they’ll make

Josh Marshall pithily sums up the choices facing the Supreme Court and Nayib Bukele:

I don’t really care what these two men say. The only next step I’m focused on is the one that now faces the Supreme Court. The White House is now brazenly ignoring the crystal clear import and goal of the Court’s order which is not to facilitate merely the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia, but his “release from custody in El Salvador.” The Court will now rapidly have to decide whether to knuckle under to this institutional humiliation or stand its ground. I don’t know which course it will choose. But I am very eager to find out.

Nayib Bukele is actively and publicly conspiring not only to violate American domestic law but the orders of American courts. El Salvador is a minor power, essentially a city-state, which even in our current degraded state requires the friendship and almost always the aid of the United States. Bukele is interfering not only in American domestic politics but the American legal and constitutional process. These are grave offenses against the sovereignty of the American people and the American constitutional order.

Trump won’t be in power forever. The next Democratic administration won’t be like the last one. He needs to know that, and the consequences of that, today.

The critical questions here are 1)whether at least two Republicans on the Supreme Court are willing to accept a permanent diminution in power to facilitate Trump’s authoritarianism, and 2)whether Bukele is willing to keep acting like Trump is never going to leave office. I wouldn’t say I’m especially optimistic about either answer.