> The Roberts court had to make this ruling for the government to function.

For the government to rule by executive order.

For the government to be able to change with the winds of Trump's opinion.

Neither of which is "functioning correctly" by my definition.

He would have been wrong to do so.

Not at all. The president has to protect the powers of his office, and when the courts overstep he doesn't have an obligation to give them deference.

Except this president thinks he has the powers of a king. Which he doesn't, and courts are right to slap him down.

There's no such thing as "courts overstep" in our system. The courts are the final word on things in the US. By definition, they cannot overstep. You or I can disagree with their rulings, but they have the force of law, unless overturned by a higher court.

Are the courts overstepping or is he just issuing blatantly illegal orders?

The courts are definitely overstepping. Note that I'm not arguing against injunctions by the higher courts. The issue is district court judges don't have jurisdiction outside their of their district and should not be trying to issue nationwide injunctions.

It's not the role of the executive to determine that, it's up to the judicial and legislative. Ignoring court orders is wildly inappropriate.

only under the assumption that the governments job is to contravene the law of the land - which up until pretty recently no one believed including the government

You're proceeding with the assumption the government would lose in court, which is not the case in the vast majority of these injunctions.

Isn't a full and proper court case required to decide what you have just proclaimed outright?

Yes. Yes it is. Which is why district court judges should not be issuing nationwide injunctions.

not a lawyer, but I believe the process involves (a) deciding if there is a case at all to be argued, which is this case there clearly is, and (b) weighing the harm of letting the government send US citizens to Sudan or life in prison in El Salvador vs the harm that would be caused by preventing the government from doing that while the case is adjudicated - which seems to be nonexistent.

That last point is where we disagree. It takes many years for a case to wend its way through the courts. We're looking at a world where a relative handful of lower court justices can issue injunctions one after the other until it's impossible for the president to do his job.

There's only one court that has the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, and that's the Supreme Court.

> The system simply cannot work if any district judge anywhere can veto the president's policies.

Except that it's been working just fine that way since before I was born, so, empirically, you're wrong.

> the president was going to be forced to start ignoring injunctions [...] The Roberts court had to make this ruling for the government to function.

So basically you're saying their way to legitimize Trump ignoring court orders is to de-legitimize an entire type of court order that has been commonplace and accepted for 50 years.

This sounds like "we'll change the law so Trump doesn't have to break it". Authoritarianism it is, then, I guess.

It used to work because District court justices used to operate within the limits of their constitutional authority. For the most part. National injunctions are a relatively new thing, and certainly the volume of injunctions from such a small number of justices is unique to the second Trump administration.

I am legitimizing Trump ignoring national preliminary injunctions by district court judges, yes. These judges have broken the system.