What did Donald Trump do today?

He openly defied court orders—and, through surrogates, mocked the courts that issued them.

Yesterday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding Trump from exercising his dubious authority to singlehandedly deport or detain people under a 1798 law. In the course of hearings on the matter, District Court Judge James Boasberg learned that some people had been hurriedly loaded onto planes, and his order granting the TRO specifically ordered the government to recall any such planes. 

Judge Boasberg emphasized the urgency in his oral instructions, telling Trump administration lawers to inform ICE immediately that "any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. However that's accomplished, turning around the plane, or not embarking anyone on the plane. …This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately."

Today, the Trump administration openly admitted that it had disregarded the order, while claiming at the same time that it hadn't—just that it had decided the order didn't apply because, by the time it was formally communicated, the people subject to it were over international waters. White House spokesperson Karolina Leavitt then pivoted to an assurance that the Trump administration would win any such case at the Supreme Court, where Trump himself has appointed a third of the justices.

As legal experts immediately pointed out, that does not change the fact that the courts have jurisdiction over the actions of the government. The executive branch cannot ignore the laws and constitution just by moving its conduct offshore. Even more obviously, the executive branch doesn't get to overrule a judicial order simply because, in its own opinion, the order doesn't apply.

The rest of the administration went out of its way to celebrate the defiance of Boasberg's order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted a social media post mocking the order by the right-wing president of El Salvador, and White House communications director Stephen Cheung recirculated it to reporters.

The Washington Post reported Sunday night that some 200 of those deportees, allegedly members of a Venezuelan gang, would spend the next year doing forced labor in an El Salvadoran prison, with the United States paying El Salvador. The Trump White House has not shown that they have been convicted or even accused of crimes in the United States (or El Salvador or Venezuela), which is the only circumstance under which forced labor is permitted since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

Meanwhile, a second judge in an unrelated case ordered the Trump administration to explain why it had "willfully disobeyed" his order regarding the deportation of a Boston physician with a lawful work visa.

In many recent cases, the Trump administration has pointedly refrained from offering any proof or allegations of bad conduct that would allow for deportation or arrest under the law. In some of them, that is almost certainly because there is no such allegation to be made. But Trump seems eager to assert that he, and not courts or Congress or the Constitution that gives Congress the power to make laws regarding immigration, is the only authority that matters.

Trump, who has recently floated the idea of selling American citizenship to the highest bidder, has some personal connection with the intricacies of immigration law. He's twice married women who appear to have broken immigration law en route to obtaining citizenship through him, and bent the rules to benefit his most recent set of in-laws who would otherwise be ineligible for citizenship.

Why does this matter?

• There is literally nothing in Trump's theory of his powers that would prevent him from deporting anyone to an El Salvadoran slave labor camp at taxpayer expense.
  
  
• No matter how many times he claims otherwise, the president is not a king.

• Claiming the power to expel "undesirables" without due process or put them in internment camps is textbook authoritarianism.

• Democracy is based on the rule of law—and respect for the law—not the personal desires or ambitions of one person.