AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The Supreme Court's words are clear and unambiguous - the government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court. That order, issued after midnight yesterday morning, concerns some 50 Venezuelans held in northern Texas. The government says they are gang members, and a 1798 law concerning invasions and declared wars allows it to detain them and deport them, presumably to El Salvador. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro joins us now. Good morning, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So let's start with a little more detail about the situation and what stood out to you about the Supreme Court's order yesterday.
MONTANARO: Well, it feels like we really are nearing a constitutional crisis. You know, the administration continues to say it's following court orders and has found ways to walk a very fine line, even if sometimes it seems to be violating the spirit of the law or these emergency orders it's enacting. I mean, the administration's claiming terrorist invasions, that there are state secrets for why they can't tell judges specifics on deportations, or what they did or didn't do to bring back someone mistakenly deported because they can't tell a foreign country what to do. Of course, if the Trump team really wanted to, it could almost certainly bring back that Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported. But the key phrase there is if they wanted to, and they've made really clear they absolutely do not want to.
RASCOE: Trump claims the U.S. is being invaded by gangs, and that's what allows him to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. But this is not the only time that he's pointed to an emergency, right?
MONTANARO: No, everything's a crisis here. You know, in addition to what we just talked about, he invoked emergencies when it comes to tariffs, for example, against Canada and Mexico. It's over fentanyl coming across the borders, even though very little of it comes from Canada. He invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 for his tariffs, more broadly to address what his administration has deemed, quote, "the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit." So he's really reaching back pretty deep to find ways to justify his actions and go around Congress, the courts or really anyone else for approvals.
RASCOE: Well, I mean, another thing that people may be looking at is, is there some emergency authority that would allow Trump to fire Fed Chairman Jay Powell?
MONTANARO: There are no emergency laws that I can think of, but the president did file an emergency petition to the Supreme Court to give him the authority to fire the heads of independent or quasi-independent agencies, like the heads of two labor-related agencies, who he fired earlier this month. The Supreme Court sort of sided with him temporarily on that, but Trump wants the court to permanently really weigh in on this issue, despite a 90-year-old precedent that says essentially that these folks can only be fired for things like malfeasance - think corruption or bribery - so really wanting the Supreme Court to give him even more power and ability to be able to control who runs these agencies, even if Congress had set them up to be more independent.
You know, the conservative majority really thinks that, you know - they've mostly deferred to his presidential power, and a lot of conservative thinkers really don't like that 1935 decision I was talking about. And Trump has done a lot of other things to try and get people out. He puts a lot of pressure on people, publicly browbeat them, hoping they'll just quit. We've certainly seen that happen. I mean, think about someone like Christopher Wray, former FBI director. He was not at the end of his term but decided to step down rather than go toe-to-toe with Trump. On the other hand, people like James Comey, previous FBI director, was only four years into a 10-year term. Trump fired him. Powell, for his part, says he's not only not going to resign, that he needs to be fired for cause. So we'll see what's going to happen there.
RASCOE: You mentioned labor agencies. One of those is the National Labor Relations Board, and NPR's Jenna McLaughlin broke some news about Elon Musk's team there. What did she find?
MONTANARO: Yeah, really complicated, a little bit. But the point this - of this was a whistleblower that came out at the agency. You know, he's an IT specialist there and said that after Elon Musk's DOGE team took over, he noticed lots of data had been deleted or transferred out of the system at the NLRB. He said that he noticed logins from Russian IP addresses. He doesn't know if that was on purpose, but he said that all of it raises real concerns about cybersecurity of sensitive government information. And this could present a real problem given DOGE is in a lot of agencies, and it could raise real questions - places like the Pentagon or Homeland Security - about the cybersecurity of some of this information. And this whistleblower said that it can be essentially like leaving on a porch light for foreign adversaries.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Domenico, thank you so much.
MONTANARO: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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