CONTEMPT PROBE DEPORTED TO LEGAL DEAD END

In a triumph of judicial choreography, a divided federal appeals court has told Judge James Boasberg to stop trying to find out whether Trump administration officials ignored his orders in an immigration case that already had all the calm, orderly dignity of a fireworks factory meeting a law library. Boasberg had said there was probable cause to consider criminal contempt after the government defied his temporary halt on deportations under a wartime authority, but before that little accountability exercise could really get dressed for work, the Trump administration kept appealing until the DC Circuit could step in and declare the whole inquiry a “clear abuse” of power—because apparently probing whether orders were followed is now too intrusive for high-level executive deliberations about national security, diplomacy, and, one assumes, whatever else was in the confidential folder marked “please don’t ask.” Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, both Trump appointees, said the district court had launched an “intrusive criminal contempt investigation” into whether the government acted willfully in transferring suspected Tren de Aragua members to Salvadoran custody, but that the trail leads