The Week's Saturday Wrap
Constitutional crisis, the death of compassion, and saving USPS

 
controversy of the week

Rule of law: Are we in a constitutional crisis?

The harrowing question of what happens if a president defies a federal court order “has hung over the United States since President Trump’s second term began,” said Ian Millhiser in Vox, and “now that long-awaited crisis may be upon us.” On March 15, federal Judge James Boasberg issued an injunction halting the deportation of two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. Told the planes were already “in the air,” Boasberg verbally ordered the administration to return the deportees to U.S. soil. But “the planes kept flying,” said Adam Liptak in The New York Times. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed the government hadn’t defied a judicial order, saying the administration followed Boasberg’s written order, which didn’t mention the planes. That was all too legalistic for Trump, who called for the impeachment of the “Radical Left Lunatic” Boasberg. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) duly filed articles of impeachment. House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, saying Congress has the power to impeach judges and “eliminate an entire district court.” Meanwhile, Bondi is citing “state secrets” to withhold from Boasberg further information about the flights, effectively arguing that the administration is immune from judicial review. The question now is not whether we’re in a constitutional crisis, but “how much damage it will cause.” 

Boasberg has the “facts and the law” on his side, said National Review in an editorial. He’s well within his power to temporarily block migrants from being deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which “has never before been invoked outside of a congressionally declared war.” Still, Trump and Bondi have “just cause to complain” about how other federal judges have bent the law “past its recognizable contours” to thwart Trump’s agenda. Unjust rulings can be appealed. But when appeals can take years, in a system that lets any of more than 600 district-court judges issue a “nationwide injunction” nullifying a presidential order, “grave objections” are legitimate. Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama both expressed “frustration” with the injunction system, said Sam Baker in Axios. Over Obama’s eight years, district courts issued a then-record 12 rulings freezing presidential policies. In the first two months of Trump’s second term, judges have issued at least 15. 

We’re not in a constitutional crisis, said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. “We’re in crises, plural.” Yes, Trump’s agenda has met with a salvo of injunctions. But when that agenda includes ending birthright citizenship (guaranteed by the Constitution), seizing Congress’s power of the purse (violating the separation of powers), and snatching people off the street to be deported without a court hearing, what do you expect? Trump is “at war with the rule of law” itself, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. With congressional Republicans too loyal or “too scared” to oppose him, “judges now stand alone” as our last defense against his “authoritarian project.” 

“This won’t end well for Trump,” said J. Michael Luttig in The New York Times. He can bluster all he wants, but Republicans lack the votes to remove judges by impeachment, and sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to “step in and assert its undisputed constitutional power to say what the law is.” Let’s hope so, said Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. But if we’ve reached the point where the fate of America’s 250-year experiment in freedom and democracy depends on at least two unpredictable conservative justices ruling against a Republican president, then we are already “in a dark place.”

 
 
VIEWPOINT

America the compassionate

“The philosopher Roger Scruton said that conservatism starts in ‘the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.’ America as formerly constituted—warts and all—was a good thing. It was good to be a country that cared about babies born with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, that was willing to save their lives for pennies a day. It was good to be a country that cared about Ukrainian children torn from their families by a hostile power, that strove toward a future that saw them home. Maybe someday we can claw our way there again—if we remember.”

Andrew Egger in The Bulwark

 
 
briefing

Saving the post office

The U.S. Postal Service is facing mounting losses and growing calls for privatization. Can it survive?

What’s wrong with the USPS?
It has been bleeding red ink for decades. The U.S. Postal Service delivered 112 billion pieces of mail in fiscal year 2024 and collected $79.5 billion in revenue—up nearly 2 percent from 2023, thanks in part to two stamp-price hikes. But despite that revenue rise, the world’s largest postal service still had a $9.5 billion annual net loss, after losing $6.5 billion on $78.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023. Just days before announcing his immediate resignation this week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced plans to reduce costs by eliminating 10,000 jobs through a voluntary retirement program and inviting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to help the agency identify “further efficiencies.” Those reforms came on top of DeJoy’s existing 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, under which mail processing operations are being moved from hundreds of towns and cities to 60 regional “mega-centers,” on-time delivery targets are being lowered, and mail is left each night at many post offices rather than being collected for processing. DeJoy, who was appointed by President Trump in 2020, said this restructuring is needed to fix “a broken organization” with “a broken business model.” Others see these reforms as part of a plot to weaken and eventually sell off the independent agency, which Trump has said should go private. “Make no mistake,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “The postal service is under attack.”

Why is the USPS losing money?
In part, it’s because the rise of electronic communications has led Americans to send less mail. The volume of first-class mail—which includes letters, postcards, and large envelopes—fell 50 percent from 2008 to 2023, from 92 billion to 46 billion. Meanwhile, marketing mail dropped by 40 percent over that period and periodicals by 65 percent. Package deliveries have soared with the boom in e-commerce, growing more than 300 percent since 2008. But that extra revenue can’t offset the fixed costs that the USPS says now make up 80 percent of its losses, including pension contributions for the agency’s 700,000 retirees and survivors, and for the 533,000 career employees who will retire in the future. Finding savings and new revenue streams that could help balance those costs is tricky for a largely self-funded agency with a mandate to deliver to all U.S. addresses, no matter how remote.

What fixes have been tried?
When he took office, DeJoy warned of “uncomfortable” rate hikes ahead. Forever Stamps have since jumped in price six times, going from 55 cents in 2020 to 73 cents today. As part of his 10-year plan, DeJoy—a former logistics-firm chief and Trump megadonor—also sharply cut employee overtime, reduced post office hours in several states, and cut the workforce by about 30,000 employees. His cost-shrinking drive got a boost in 2022, when Congress passed bipartisan legislation that rescinded a 2006 rule mandating the USPS pre-fund its retiree health benefits 75 years in advance, something demanded of no other federal agency. That law should save the agency about $27 billion by 2032. Have DeJoy’s reforms worked? USPS ended the first quarter of 2025 with a $144 million profit—a rare gain after more than a decade of annual losses. But insiders and customers complain that DeJoy’s cost cuts have resulted in far worse service. Relaxed standards have led to a nearly 40 percent slowdown in first-class mail, with on-time delivery of three-to-five-day mail dropping from nearly 81 percent in 2019 to 73 percent last year. In Atlanta, a pilot version of DeJoy’s processing-centralization plan pushed on-time delivery of first-class mail down to as low as 36 percent in spring 2023. During a House Oversight Committee hearing last December, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) told DeJoy that many businesspeople he knew refused to use the Postal Service because of such problems. As McCormick continued to lambaste DeJoy, the postmaster general covered his ears and said, “You’re talking to yourself.” 

Are other reforms in the works?
Trump, who recently called the Postal Service “just a tremendous loser for this country,” has floated privatization or placing the agency under the authority of the Commerce Department. Such dramatic changes would require an act of Congress, and lawmakers from both parties are reluctant to tamper with a government body that’s viewed favorably by 72 percent of Americans. Privatization is “a very bad idea,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “There’s a lot of room to make [USPS] a lot better, but getting rid of it? No.” But Musk, whose DOGE organization has the Postal Service in its sights, insists that “we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.” DeJoy’s departure could leave the agency vulnerable to a DOGE takeover. 

What would privatization do?
Postal service outside cities would likely become less reliable—or in some cases, nonexistent. More than half of all post offices serve rural areas, including places where private competitors such as UPS and FedEx don’t find it cost-effective to operate. About 14.5 million rural Ameri- cans lack broadband internet access, making them dependent on the Postal Service for bill paying, prescription medications, and other essentials. “Everything important to them comes in the mail,” said postal worker Kay Foltz, who works out of a small central Ohio post office. “It really is a service that if people didn’t have, I think our country would be a lot different.”

 
 

Only in America

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has endorsed a bill that would ban “nonhuman behavior” in public schools. The Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education (FURRIES) Act, would prohibit activities such as barking, hissing, meowing, litter-box use, and the wearing of tails and/or fur except on Halloween and other approved holidays. Speaking to a group of Baptist ministers, Abbott said students should be “learning the fundamentals of education,” not being “distracted by furries.”

 
 
talking points

Venezuelan deportees: Locked up for tattoos?

As details emerge about the 238 Venezuelans deported to a brutal El Salvador prison, it’s become clear why the Trump administration gave these accused gang members no “semblance of due process,” said Shirin Ali and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate: Evidence of their criminality “is weak to the point of nonexistence.” The administration called the men members of the gang Tren de Aragua and thus subject to immediate deportation under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. But stories are emerging like that of Jerce Reyes Barrios, a former pro soccer player who was “living peacefully” in the U.S. with no criminal record. Barrios, 36, says he sought asylum in the U.S. after being arrested, electrocuted, and suffocated in a protest against the Venezuelan regime. Now U.S. authorities claim that his tattoo of a crown atop a soccer ball inspired by the logo of his favorite team, Real Madrid, proves he belonged to Tren de Aragua. Many others seem to have been locked up due to “benign tattoos,” like one man’s crown of thorns, a “tribute to his grandmother” stamped with her death date.

Terrified family members say loved ones with no gang ties are imprisoned, said Trevor Hughes in USA Today. They include Franco José Caraballo, 26, who fled Venezuela with his wife and applied for asylum after they were “roughed up” for opposing President Nicolás Maduro. The longtime barber was cutting hair in Sherman, Texas, before a razor tattoo on his neck “caught the eye of authorities.” He and the others “could face long or indefinite detention” in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison “rife with human rights abuses,” said Daniella Silva in NBCNews.com. Inmates have spoken of extreme crowding and torture, but the Venezuelans’ attorneys say they have no path to recourse and can’t even contact their clients. 

What happens now is uncertain, said Marcos Alemán in the Associated Press. This week, lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government petitioned for the prisoners’ release, but “the lack of judicial independence” in El Salvador makes it “unlikely” the country’s courts will help. In the U.S., two judges ripped the deportees’ lack of due process, said Jan Wolfe and Sadie Gurman in The Wall Street Journal. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” said Patricia Millett, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will rule on whether the Trump administration can resume deportations under the act. No president has ever used the 1798 statute as Trump has, said Millett, putting the nation “in unprecedented territory.”

 
 

It wasn't all bad

Dachshunds are no strangers in medieval Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany—the town’s Dackelmuseum celebrates the pooches with more than 4,500 pieces of memorabilia. But in March the pups earned another honor: the Guinness World Record for the largest dachshund walk. Seven months earlier the museum sponsored a dog walk for 897 dogs from 19 countries and their owners, who dressed in traditional Bavarian costume. The walk proceeded from a parking lot, across a stone bridge and through narrow stone streets, ending at the Dackelmuseum. Museum founder Seppi Küblbeck said he started the event to spread positivity. “For the dachshund, all people are equal.”

 
 
people

Paltrow’s intimacy lessons

Gwyneth Paltrow is back to acting now that her kids are off to college, said Michelle Ruiz in Vanity Fair, and her offspring may blush when they see the result. Paltrow, 52, is paired up with heartthrob Timothée Chalamet, 29, in the upcoming 1950s-set Marty Supreme, and things get rather heated. “We have a lot of sex in this movie—a lot,” she says. “I was like, ‘OK, great. I’m 109 years old. You’re 14.’” While making the film, she encountered a phenomenon that’s new since she last took it all off on set. “There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator, which I did not know existed.” When the coordinator asked if Paltrow was OK with Chalamet making a particular move, “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’” Ultimately, she and Chalamet, whom she calls “very polite, properly raised,” waved off the overseer. “We said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back.’ I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but if someone is like, ‘OK, and then he’s going to put his hand here’”—she places a hand on her own shoulder—“I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.”

 
 

Saturday Wrap was written and edited by Theunis Bates, Chris Erikson, Bill Falk, Mark Gimein, Allan Kew, Bruno Maddox, and Hallie Stiller.

Image credits, from top:  AP; Getty; Getty; Getty