White House insiders admit that Donald Trump expects his administration will be sued over its latest immigration policy — but with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, he expects to win those suits.
Two senior administration officials that spoke to NBC News said that "of the [immigration] measures most likely to be approved by the president, all were likely to lead to a lawsuit."
With the administration unveiling a new policy Thursday night that will expedite deportations of people who cross into the US illegally and deny previously legal asylum claims and sign an executive order on that policy Friday morning, the White House is prepared for the lawsuits likely to be brought against it.
"Although the Trump administration expects to be enjoined and stopped in the near term," one of the officials told NBC, "they believe a policy based on the discretionary authority of the president over who is admitted to the U.S. will ultimately hold up in the Supreme Court."
The other official said that an executive order likely to be upheld by the Supreme Court "is the best alternative" with Congress stalled on immigration.
Despite the administration's reported confidence in Kavanaugh voting in the president's favor, the new justice's most recent record tells a different story.
Slate reported on November 5 that Kavanaugh has declined to "run interference" for Trump in three of his early rulings — when he declined to rule on the controversial citizenship question on the 2020 Census; when he did not publicly share his vote on the deposition of former commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and stayed mum on the court's decision to punt the legality of the citizenship question to a circuit court.
