Updated March 25, 2025 at 10:13 AM ET
As courts continue to push back against President Trump and his policies, the White House is showing no intention of allowing the narrative about the administration's legal challenges to stay inside the courtroom.
Instead, Trump and his aides are driving headlines, accusing judges who have ruled against the administration of being liberal activists, and painting anyone who raises concerns about due process or other issues as being out of touch with everyday Americans.
"President Trump is delivering on the common-sense policies that Americans overwhelmingly voted for, and leftist judges shouldn't deprive the president of his constitutional authority to enact his lawful agenda," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told NPR.
Trump is attempting to set the parameters of the debate with this strategy, forcing Democrats and the media to respond to him — and not the other way around, said Doug Heye, a veteran Republican strategist.
"In politics, you always want to be talking about what you want to talk about and have your opponent talk about what you want to talk about," said Heye.
He compared Trump to a matador waving the red cape of a provocative political issue, knowing very well that all of Washington and the press will follow him like a charging bull.
Since taking office, Trump's rhetoric against the judicial system has intensified. He's betting Americans care more about removing gang members than whether they get a by-the-book court hearing. It's just one of the several examples of how Trump is picking favored political issues to test the U.S. system of checks and balances.
Last week, Trump spent days attacking the judge who tried to stop him from deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and other migrants.
During an Oval Office meeting, Trump laid out why he felt the various fights he's having with the judicial branch help him more than hurt him.
"I just can't imagine that the Democrats are taking this issue where they want to have them back," Trump said. "So now they have men playing in women's sports. They have transgender for everyone. They have open borders. They have all of their crazy policies that are, I think, 95-5 and not 90-10. And their new policy is let's bring Tren de Aragua back into our country."
Legal cases move slowly and can be boring. They often hinge on complexities the ordinary public doesn't care about or understand.
What people care about is being safe in their own neighborhoods, said Sandy Moyer, chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of North Carolina. She said they're also worried about "activist judges" encouraging other judges to make questionable rulings that will make it harder for Trump.
"There is a concern that this is going to delay this issue that we want to see swiftly being handled," Moyer said.
'Playing footsie' with a constitutional showdown
The White House edged closer to a constitutional showdown after U.S. officials flew planes full of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador — despite a court order telling the administration to stop using an obscure wartime law to deport people.
But Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who served in the Biden White House, said the administration has stopped short of defying the courts.
"What I see them doing so far is playing footsie with the notion of defying a court order rather than actually defying a court order," he said.
The White House says it's going to obey court orders and has expressed confidence it will ultimately win the court cases.
In addition to attacking the judge handling the case over the deportation flights, members of the Trump administration have also lashed out at the judiciary for hampering his efforts to cut the federal workforce.
This weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, criticized the judge who temporarily blocked the administration's effort to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
"President Trump is delivering on the common-sense policies that Americans overwhelmingly voted for, and leftist judges shouldn't deprive the President of his constitutional authority to enact his lawful agenda," said White House spokesman Harrison Fields.
'Picking the fight'
It makes sense that Trump and his team are picking these specific issues to go public about, said Jon McHenry, a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research.
"When you're picking the fight, you're essentially fighting from your safest ground," said McHenry.
Politically, it's a winning issue. It's one Trump campaigned on, and the White House is claiming the deportation operation is him carrying out that promise.
Strategists say reasonable people may disagree about immigration and who should be allowed to remain in the country and who shouldn't. But Trump is making this about deporting criminals.
"It's harder for the other side to argue it on the point of, 'no, you shouldn't be deporting gang members,'" McHenry said. "Well, 80% of Americans probably do think you should be deporting gang members, as quickly as possible. And they don't really care about any constitutional rights or separation of powers between the presidency and the judicial."
The administration has given little evidence that the deportees are even gang members.
But Jenny Stromer-Galley, who studies political messaging at Syracuse University, says if Trump and his surrogates allow the lawyers to start telling the story, they lose the message.
It's also about reinforcing Trump's image that only a strong executive can cut through the gridlock of Congress and judiciary.
"They're not willing to let the judiciary and these processes just play out, because then to some degree, they're acknowledging that the judiciary could be a check on the executive branch's power," said Stromer-Galley.
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