'Small warning' from Justice Alito signals even he is feeling 'fear' about Trump: analysis

“The most predictable guessing game in Washington, D.C., in the first three months of Donald Trump's second presidency has focused on not if he will spark a Constitutional crisis, but when,” according to USA Today columnist Chris Brennan.

The writer claimed Democrats have been leading the way in questioning the president, and GOP members, who he believes are “repulsed” by his “penchant for trampling the U.S. Constitution,” are now following.

Brennan believes Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is one of those conservatives who is beginning to question Trump, and the judge has offered a “warning” in his latest ruling.

The presumption comes after reading Alito's carefully crafted dissent in a case in which the court demanded the the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

“We can learn more by observing the behavior of Trump's most predictable enablers – Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito, for instance – while trying to gauge how close we are to a constitutional crisis,” he wrote.

“The standard Trump operating procedure for immigration issues during his first three months in office has been to break the law quickly, then complain about people pointing out the law-breaking, then shrug off the judiciary by claiming to have no power to remedy the injustice.

"Alito knows all that. That's why he tacked onto the end of his dissent these words: ‘Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.’"

“He wouldn't need to say that if we could expect Trump to follow the law. Alito here, by saying that the president has to abide by the court's pause on deportations, is acknowledging the very real possibility that he will not do that,” Brennan wrote

“Alito's small warning about obeying the law at the end of his peevish missive about rushing to rule on immigration matters is a signal, showing us his fear that so often green-lighting Trump's worst impulses might one day render the Supreme Court powerless to constrain him in any significant way.”