Stephen Miller, Team Trump Relish This Judicial Fight

The White House is aggressively pushing back against challenges to its deportation of immigrants over the weekend. A Justice Department lawyer, for example, clashed with a federal judge in court on Monday, maintaining that the move was a matter of national security because the deportees were alleged gang members. And supporters of President Trump also seem to be relishing the fight in the public arena, with Exhibit A being deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

• Miller appeared on Fox News Monday and responded to comments made by former FBI general counsel Andrew Weismann. The latter, appearing on MSNBC, called Trump's move to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invalid because we're not at war, and he accused the White House of disobeying a judge's order to stop the flights. "The doomsday scenario for this country is the idea that you would just ignore a court order," he said, per Newsweek.
• Miller's response? "Andrew Weissman is an absolute moron," he said, per Mediaite. "He is a moron, and he is a fool, and he's a degenerate. ... He was involved in the Mueller coup against a democratically elected president, Donald J. Trump. Weissman should never be on TV anywhere. He should hang his head in eternal shame for what he's done to this country. And now he's up there shilling for people who rape and murder Americans. That's who Andrew Weissman is."

• Other big figures in the world of MAGA are weighing in, including Steve Bannon, reports Axios. He and others insist that the federal judge who ordered planes carrying the deportees to El Salvador to turn around had no jurisdiction to do so. (The planes did not turn around.) "I think there ought to be a much broader swath of impeachments" of such judges, Bannon said on his War Room podcast. "We have to fight fire with fire. ... They want to slow the Trump administration's flood-the-zone."
• The outlet quotes another podcaster, Jack Posobiec, declaring that "immigration under national security concerns is obviously an area where, No. 1, the judiciary, and particularly these district judges, have gone completely overboard."
• Also on Fox News, Trump border czar Tom Homan dismissed the judicial concerns, notes the New York Times. "I don't care what the judges think," he said, adding that "the plane was already over international waters with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats." Part of the White House argument is that the judge's order to turn the planes came too late. Analysis of flight data show none of the three planes involved had landed in El Salvador before federal judge James Boasberg issued his verbal order for them to turn around, per the Times.

(More mass deportations stories.)