The Trump administration's confrontation with the judicial branch raises new fears of a possible constitutional crisis and the president moves to shut down the Department of Education.

Meanwhile, across the Potomac, Elon Musk visits the Pentagon.

Next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

And welcome to just another week in Donald Trump's Washington.

People throw around the term constitutional crisis all the time, and I include myself in the category of people here.

But what does it actually mean?

Would it be a constitutional crisis if the president defies a federal judge's order on the detention of immigrants?

Are we already in such a crisis, I have many questions.

Luckily, I also have very smart people at this table to help us understand these issues.

Joining me tonight, Eugene Daniels is a senior Washington correspondent and co-host of The Weekend on MSNBC.

David Ignatius is a columnist at The Washington Post.

Michael Scherer is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic and Nancy.

Yusuf is a national security correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.

Thank you all for joining me.

Another no Newsweek in Washington.

Um, let me go right to it, David.

Um, uh, this is gonna feel like a homework assignment, but what's the definition of a constitutional crisis, and you cannot use chat GPT to answer this question.

So my definition would be, uh, constitutional crisis is when the president defies the Supreme Court.

We're heading in that direction.

The president is responding to sharp pushback from the Chief Justice by pushing back himself right-wing Twitter is talking about a judicial coup, this is, you know, increasingly, uh, I think a dangerous moment.

The president has gone after the, the executive agencies going after congressionally authorized agencies and programs to go after the military.

Now he's going after the judiciary.

Um, I, I, I do think that ahead of us is a confrontation which the Supreme Court is going to decide what Executive authority president has.

It will be a landmark case.

Uh, it's, it's coming, but until we reach that moment, Jeff, I wouldn't say we're at the constitutional crisis.

That's the moment where it will happen and we'll see we'll see what the court does right just to illustrate something you're talking about.

I want you to all listen to the president sounding a bit ominous on the subject of judges he doesn't like.

We have very bad judges, and these are judges that shouldn't be allowed.

I think they, I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.

So, so, you know, obviously this is uh comments like these are what prompted the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, to mildly rebuke the president, and say, you know, we, we, you, you don't, almost like schoolhouse rock style.

You don't get rid of Judges because you disagree with them.

That's not, that's not the system.

But you know, David, you said something interesting.

You said when it goes to the Supreme Court, if he defines the Supreme Court, but, but Michael, we have a situation right now where he seemed to be defying a judge at the at the district court level about a live issue that was the movement of, of um uh illegal aliens, immigrants, undocumented alleged gang members, etc.

out of the country.

So why is That not A constitutional crisis.

Well, I would say it's not a constitutional crisis because that judge is still having hearings.

There's another hearing today.

There was a hearing yesterday.

He could put sanctions on the government next week if he finds against the president.

The president could then appeal those sanctions, and that's how the process works.

That's how we roll through now it's not unheard of that a litigant before a court would defy a judge.

What would be unheard of is if it goes to the end of the road, as David said, especially in a court where, you know, 6 of the 9 recently ruled in Trump's favor and Trump in the in the election interference, uh, uh, case, and, and 3 of them he appointed.

So if he, if he defies this court, that will be a remarkable moment, I think.

So Eugene, you agree that um it's not a crisis yet, it's just um.

Probing a bit not a constitutional crisis.

I think a lot of people would say is some type of crisis, I think they're right, right?

Like we have a system and the, the apex of this, the peak of it is in that crash is when we're at the end of the road, as Michael was just saying, and we're not there yet.

It doesn't appear that they're slowing down this White House.

They continue to say like, you know, we are going to do what these judges say, but then you have the president saying these other things.

So there's this, these conflicting method.

messages and I think the most important part of this is there are 3 branches of government, right?

They are supposed to be co-equal branches of government.

The legislative branch also has a hand to play.

So if Donald Trump is to, let's say at the end of the day, defy the Supreme Court and do what does whatever he wants to do, then you have the um legislative branch that is supposed to do something that Congress should step in and do something as a part of that, but you have to be co-equal.

Everyone has to agree they're coequal and at this point, the Republicans in Congress are just fine.

With Donald Trump telling them what to do.

It doesn't seem like Donald Trump believes that they're co-equal, but Nancy, yeah, but Nancy, uh, so.

Eugen makes an interesting point about Congress.

Maybe this is not a constitutional collapse.

Maybe it's sort of Constitutional narcolepsy in a kind of way, uh, I'm looking for a saying here, see if it catches on.

No, no, no, like there's a kind of collapse here in the sense that Congress, the judges are doing their thing right now.

Congress, Republican ruled in both houses.

Congress doesn't seem to be seized by this issue of defiance or this idea that judges, we, I don't like, I, as the president I don't like, should be, should be impeached.

Where's Congress?

Well, let's start with don't say at the end of Pennsylvania.

Well, I think it comes back to your original question of what is a constitutional crisis and the fact that we don't agree on it and that the party doesn't agree and that Congress doesn't agree on it, so therefore there's not a resolution on how to to address it if you believe a constitutional crisis is when we get to the point where constitutional rights can't guide us to a resolution of conflict, then, then I think there's an agreement of sort of congressional intervention.

And having said that, if you agree, if you believe that a judge rules incorrectly.

There's a rule for Congress as well.

So to Eugene's point, these ideas of checks and balances they they happen throughout, I think the challenge is because we're seeing a real flood of the zone in terms of some of these challenges, a disagreement about what defiess defiance versus testing boundaries.

I think how that's mapping out on the hill is that you're not seeing a uniform response in terms of how to address it.

Congress and Congress.

itself when Donald Trump defied them and said, I'm not going to, um, you know, Dole is going to do whatever it wants in these organizations that you guys created, right, the organizations you guys created, we're not gonna spend those monies, we're not gonna do that.

They don't even care if he does that.

So I don't see them jumping in if he's having beef with judges.

I just don't see it happening.

David, you've watched this stuff for a while and uh it it just it struck me that Or in ordinary times, a Chief Justice of the United States rebuking or however you want to term what Justice Chief Justice Roberts did, that would be A momentous story rebuking the president of the United States for saying things that are out of the bounds of this idea of co-equality among the, the branches.

Um, How Odd is this moment historically.

And, and B.

Let's say it goes to the Supreme Court.

Let's say the Supreme Court.

Rules against Donald Trump.

It's not impossible.

Obviously people on the right are worried about Amy Coney Barrett and her independence from the movement, um, what would, what would it look like the day, what would America look like the day after Trump said, I'm not listening to the Supreme Court.

So, you know, that's a moment that we dread to imagine what authority in the end with the Supreme Court have to.

Enforce its ruling against the president and in the end, I think we would have a constitutional crisis.

We would have the people I hope enraged at the defiance that's a direct assault on the Constitution.

Every official of the United States government swears an oath to the Constitution.

They need to be reminded of that.

Every member of Congress surely understands that an attack on the Supreme Court of the United States goes to the very heart of what our country is, what the founders imagine.

You take a look at the Constitution.

It couldn't be clearer, you know, it just enumerates the powers of each branch.

Article 3 talking about the powers of the judiciary couldn't be clearer, and that's what Trump is going at all this.

Talk that Trump is encouraging about judges, uh, you know, issuing orders, blocking things, calling that a judicial coup when Robert's questions his authority.

He waited a day and then he came right back and attacked Roberts.

Fine name and said Roberts must immediately in all caps, fix this or some bad things will happen.

I get exactly.

There's another way of interpreting what the president is doing right now, which is he went to the Justice Department last week and told a story about Bobby Knight, the, the basketball coach and how great he was at working the refs.

It's clearly in his mind.

It's also true that a lot of the things his administration wants to do, it needs the court to change current legal interpretation to do.

He needs judges.

Either he's going to go, you know, Totally rip up the Constitution and go it alone, or he's going to do what they said they're going to do, which is to challenge birthright citizenship, to challenge the Empowerment Act, to challenge all these laws that are on the books right now.

They're interpreted as legal right now that he doesn't think are legal.

And, and so I think a way of looking at what this is, what, what he's doing here, and he did it in the first term, is he's, he's threatening judges.

He's saying, look, I'll make your life hard.

If you defy me, I'm going to call you out.

I'm gonna make everything difficult around here, and he, he's doing a Bobby Knight.

He's throwing the chair, you know, into the middle of the basketball court.

Nancy I don't want to ask you to speculate, but could you speculate on the likelihood that Donald Trump Actually exceeds all of these red lines.

Based on the first couple of months of this administration.

I mean, it seems implausible to my American brain that such a thing could happen.

In federal government, but Well, I think to my to the point you just made is because they're not using just one, usually when we've had constitutional challenges, it's been over one issue.

The flooding of the zone, I think, is having real impact in that they might lose on birthright but win on something else and so that it allows us to sort of pro.

Extend itself and go on for extended periods of time.

I think the one thing that sort of gives me hope is once we get to that point of a constitutional crisis where it's defiance and it's open.

We are saying that the country is ruled by one and the spirit of this country, I don't think would allow for that.

It's not just the Constitution, but the very nature of this country has fought against one person ruling to get to that crisis is just is one person now ruling the president, and so that's where I'm optimistic and I think practically speaking, the number of cases that have come forward is such that.

I don't think it'll be a straight line.

It'll be some cases they win, some cases they lose, and that in and of itself will affect the timeline, but also some of this is just about the basing the fight, right?

So one thing that's really interesting, and all of us know this from covering Donald Trump and his folks for so long is that it's the thing that they're doing is is not always the thing that they want everyone to be paying attention to.

And sometimes the underlying part of it is they just want his base to be stay riled up and understand that he wants Canada.

Keep, keep the fight, but like that is, but that, that, that is also a part of this, right?

So whether or not he wants to take Canada and be the fifty-first state, or whether or not he really truly believes deeply that the 14th Amendment does not give people who are born here, citizenship is about the people within the party and people in his base seeing him have the fight, sometimes just for the fight's sake, fighting with the judges is also a part of that.

Not saying that he doesn't want to take it to the end of the line, but that fight is important to him and his team.

Spend a couple of minutes talking about another dramatic action this week, um, he's the president has made moves to shut down the Department of Education.

Admittedly it's not a department founded in the late 1700s, but it's a, it's a, it's a federal department starting in 1979 and the Carter administration.

What was his motivation, David?

So if you read the the the uh announcement, the order, he says we have an education crisis in America that our students are not performing up to world standards.

We need to fix that, and so he's going to dismantle this bureaucracy which he's argues is obstructing.

Performance, you know, we do have an education crisis in America, but the Department of Education is not the reason.

It's a, it's a big complicated cultural issue.

It deserves everybody's attention, and again, this, this is a distraction.

Education is getting too politicized as it is, and this makes it even more so, and I think that's really the sad part.

I want, I want to read you what Jimmy Carter said when he established the department in 1979.

I don't know what history will show, but my My guess is that the best move for the quality of life in America in the future might very well be the establishment of this new Department of Education.

Nancy, did it achieve what Jimmy Carter sought?

Well, let's talk about what it doesn't do.

It doesn't set curriculum.

It doesn't set um graduation requirements.

It doesn't set enrollments.

What they ended up doing were things like student loans and ended up I'm advocating for disabled students to be able to get an education and under the Trump administration those responsibilities are going to be divvied out to other government organizations, um, Small Business Administration for loans and HHS.

I think the challenge is what the department that in divvy it up.

While the federal government will still have a role once it's not under one umbrella, which the Department of Education provided and having and carry that responsibility of really having an education focused mandate on these issues.

You risk that those issues will not be addressed as um sufficiently and adequately as they were under the Department of Education.

HHS might have experience with dealing with meeting the needs of the disabled, but it doesn't have the experience of making sure that disabled children have their needs met to make sure they get an equal.

education.

There's another thing going on here.

There is, it's a smaller part of the Department of Education, but there's an $800 million think tank in the middle of it that does things like track the education performance of American students.

So the reason we know the reason we know we're doing badly were doing badly as the education there.

The the they train teachers, they do research.

They they actually contribute to trying to improve things.

Where do they say it's going?

They haven't.

So what the president has said is the final disposition of the Department of Education will have to We have to go to Congress for, but it's not at all clear.

I mean they're clearly reducing the Department of Education like there are other agencies, but what becomes of those other parts of the Department of Education is still an open question, Eugene, the people of America are not exactly rising up in defense of the Department of Education.

It's sort of an unloved department.

What's the, what are the politics here for the Democrats?

Well, part of it is that people don't know, they don't care what organizations or what departments are doing the things that impact their daily life.

They just want it to.

Happen, right?

So you go to someone and say, do you want the Department of Education to keep doing what it's doing.

They'll be like, I don't know, but if you ask them, do you wanna make sure there's equity in schools.

Do you want to make sure someone cares about disabled kids and what they're learning and what access they have in schools.

They'll say, yeah, that's probably, that's something that I want, right?

And so the lack of specificity in the conversation, I think makes it easier for Republicans to do this, and Donald Trump is not the first Republican that has promised or wanted to get rid of the Department of Education.

After it was created by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan ran on wanting to get rid of the department of education.

So this has been a long, a long held dream of the Republican Party, but every single time, even when presidents talk to leaders in their party that were in Congress, the congressional leader said, no, we can't do that.

There's no votes for that.

So there's still probably votes for that.

And so what you're seeing is instead of Donald Trump going to Congress and saying let's get rid of it.

He's bleeding it out as much as he can.

And this is one more, one more proof of the second.

Trump tsunami approach, right?

Um, uh, speaking of a human tsunami, uh, Elon Musk went to the, I'm just trying transitions out.

Let me give me give me give me give me some slack, um, the, uh, Elon Musk went to the Pentagon, uh, you were there.

He did not get a briefing on the China war plan as we thought, but what was he doing there in the first place and what happened?

So as we understand it, there was a request from Musk to get some kind of briefing on China and they, the defense department started to facilitate that.

And then it came out and overnight from what we can tell, plans changed and so by the time he arrived in the building, what went from meeting in the tank, which is one of the most secure rooms in the Pentagon.

He headed right up to, um, the secretary's office.

They met for 90 minutes, um, we were told by the president in this street that China wouldn't come out.

At all, even though the commander in charge of the US military response to China was tasked to um speak to Elon Musk and that they talked about technology and innovation, and actually that he wasn't there to learn but to teach the department about some of his skills with some of the the talking points we heard from the Pentagon today, and so he spent about 90 minutes in the building.

It caused quite a stir, um, but I can't tell you precisely what came out of it other than it wasn't what it was originally intended.

Just listen for one second.

Trump talking about this and and here he seems unusually soft about the, the uh, the, the general approach.

Just listen to Trump on this for a second.

I don't want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn't show it to a businessman who is helping us so much.

Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that, but it was such a fake story.

Well, so in other words, in other words, Trump is saying that this would be outside the norms to show a business.

been with interest in China, the the war plan he calls it a fake story, but I mean, and this is a question about the challenge of reporting in this amid this maelstrom, um, do you, we, we don't yet have a sense of what actually was trying to be accomplished by Elon Musk.

No, but you know the conflict leading up to it was revealing because the president was irritated at the suggestion that he would open up the operational planning book to Elon Musk because there's a conflict of interest, but that's been the.

argument the whole time about having him in this position and they came back and there's gambling in Casablanca.

I mean, or, or whatever the expression is, I mean, that's, that's not exactly, but it was revelatory that he seemed to be frustrated by it, even though he set up the mechanisms that put it in place and went on to say he's here to look for cuts in the government if someone's making money through Teslas through Chinese production if they're getting could use the intel that the military has for SpaceX, should he be deciding what government agencies within the Pentagon should or should Not stay on go ahead.

I had a different read on especially his meeting with the secretary.

A week and a half ago or whatever it was 2 weeks ago, there was that blow up, right?

With the secretaries Elon Musk and, and President Trump.

Marco Rubio cabinet.

People are upset because they felt like he was overstepping his bounds.

He was controlling their departments.

Donald Trump has tasked Elon Musk with going into the Department of Defense, right?

And so you have Elon Musk going meeting, um, walking out and laughing and giggling with Secretary Heck Seth out of the building.

That shows a chumminess and so when Do does what it ends up doing.

that will tell the rest of us that maybe hex Seth and Elon are friends and they're fine with the fact that that he's doing these kinds of things.

So I also think there's like some PR happening behind the scenes of making sure that the Elon is seen as going to the secretaries and not as going against them.

David, what do you think is going on here at the deepest level anytime Trump draws a line on Musk's ability to get a briefing to take actions anytime the president says There may be a conflict of interest here I think it's a good, that's a good, good moment.

We need more of that, you know, I think, uh, as, as Eugene said, uh, What should be ahead in terms of making the government more efficient is a real You know, uh, uh, you know, bringing the chainsaw to some of the wasteful spending at the Pentagon.

Anybody who follows the Pentagon, a good reporter like Nancy knows there is incredible waste and you're going after USAID, you know, these little agencies while there's this massive misuse of taxpayer money that doesn't make the country safer that uh preserves preserves uh legacy weapon systems that are increasingly outmoded, that has layers of bureaucracy.

make it almost impossible to to manage efficiently.

So.

People do need to focus on that if Musk is going to do that, you know, I think that's, that's a mission that that that I actually like to see him, to see him fold in the China piece though, because Musk has been, I mean, Musk is economically dependent on China.

He's been friendly to China.

He's been unfriendly to Taiwan.

The idea that he would get a briefing on, you know, war plans for China is appalling, and I think in that little clip that you showed, uh, you saw in in in Trump's response, his understanding that's a no go, uh, but uh, you know, the, uh, again, I, I think the idea that we're going to make this, you know, overstuffed, often inefficient technologically backward.

US government more efficient, you know, that's something that I think people would like to see.

It's just the way he's dealt with a chainsaw approach to that has been crazy, right?

I think that's a great point, but does he need a China 101 briefing.

Should a military commander be doing it?

Is that for Dosh and and if and if or and does it give them a financial benefit as well.

This is where the conflict of interest emerges, I think, right?

There are a lot of businessmen who would like to get a senior most briefing on China, even if it's unclassified, even if it's just this is our, this is our overall posture, um, but, and he has a security clearance so they can answer his questions, um, at a secret level um that's intelligence that but that's invaluable in some businesses.

Well, I predict that we will be spending more time trying to interpret.

The role of Elon Musk in the federal government in the coming weeks.

That's my, that's my big prediction for the evening.

I'm sorry to say that that's all the time we have for, for now.

um I do want to thank our panelists for an excellent discussion.

Thank you very much, and I want to thank our viewers for joining us for a look at one of the biggest mistakes of the COVID era, letting so many people die alone, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.