In a scorching ruling, a U.S. federal judge found probable cause to hold President Donald Trump's administration in contempt for "deliberately and gleefully" violating his order last month halting flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under a wartime law.

Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg's April 16 order is the latest escalation in the Trump administration's standoff with the courts over its deportations of migrants to a prison in El Salvador. Some legal experts worry the courts and Trump administration are careening toward a Constitutional crisis over the case.

The president and his allies have suggested Boasberg be impeached, and cited national security concerns in refusing to provide details to the judge, who noted those same officials published detailed social media videos of the detainees arriving in El Salvador.

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Faculty members from US universities – including public ones which do not receive endowments – are banding together in attempts to resist the Donald Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedoms.

The resolution comes as a result of “recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies [which] pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech”.

Harvard University is very rich. On that, most people agree.

Whether it’s rich enough to get through the next four years unscathed is less certain.

On Monday, the Ivy League school’s leaders took the bold step of publicly rejecting a sprawling list of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration. Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, rebuked the government’s ultimatum, which directed the university to overhaul its admissions, hiring and teaching practices – or risk losing billions in federal funding.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote in a public statement. “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The consequences of Harvard’s defiance were swift.

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A federal judge declined Tuesday to hold the Trump administration in contempt for failing to return a Maryland father wrongly deported to El Salvador but admonished government attorneys for failing to provide evidence of what they were doing to bring him home.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland ordered the U.S. to show what steps it is taking to comply with a court ruling to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was expelled from the U.S. in March.

Xinis said Abrego Garcia's attorneys would be allowed to take the sworn testimony of government officials in the case and that the process could take two weeks.

"There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship and grandstanding," she said.

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