Can the courts act as a check on the Trump administration’s power? 

Though this question is not new, it has taken on an urgency as the case of a Maryland man accidentally deported to a prison in El Salvador has highlighted the White House’s increasingly combative stance towards the judiciary. 

This week Trump’s team appeared to flout a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that said the government must “facilitate” Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Days later, a federal court judge threatened to hold the government in contempt for “doing nothing.”

“This country was built on checks and balances,” says Joan Biskupic, chief Supreme Court analyst for CNN and author of several book about our judicial system, including Nine Black Robes. “If we don’t have checks on what a very powerful executive branch is doing right now,” she warns, “we don’t have the same democracy we had.” 

Biskupic joins Diane to talk about what might come next in the legal showdown over the administration’s recent deportations and what it means for the legitimacy of the courts.