Obscured by the absurd theatricality of this Donald Trump presidency is a dangerous erosion of the principle upon which the nation was founded: the rule of law.

The genius of the Constitution is its system of checks and balances, with three equal branches of the federal government sharing power. Trump is claiming the authority to rule as he pleases, arrogantly daring Congress and the judiciary to stop him.

On Saturday, in defiance of a federal court order, Trump used the Alien Enemies Act — a 1798 law previously invoked only in wartime — to deport 137 Venezuelan migrants, flying them and 124 others to El Salvador for open-ended detention in a grim prison complex accused of brutal human rights violations. The White House claims, without offering proof, that the Venezuelans were members of a violent gang called Tren de Aragua, which officials call a “terrorist” group waging “war” against the United States.

The irony is rich, because the whole made-for-television episode — complete with video of migrants being hauled away in shackles, having their heads shaved and being forced to kneel before their Salvadoran jailers — was clearly intended to terrorize the millions of undocumented migrants who remain in the United States.

Early Saturday evening, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a ruling barring the deportations and ordering that aircraft ferrying the migrants be turned around if necessary. Yet the three planes landed in El Salvador hours after Boasberg’s ruling. “I don’t care what the judges think,” said Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar.

On Tuesday, Trump went so far as to call Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge” on social media and proclaim that he “should be IMPEACHED.” That outburst prompted a rare statement from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to a disagreement concerning a judicial decision” and that the “normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

No one should have sympathy for violent criminals who have no legal right to remain in the United States. I certainly don’t. But I do cherish the rule of law — and you should, too. We have no way of knowing whether those deported migrants are gangsters, because they were given no due process.

In a separate case, the Trump administration flatly refused to obey a different federal court order. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin instructed officials not to deport Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University professor who had been detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport upon returning from a visit to Lebanon, her home country. Alawieh holds a visa allowing her to live and work here. Customs and Border Protection agents put her on a plane to Paris anyway.

Trump has been equally contemptuous of the legislative branch. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority to write laws and set spending levels. This president seeks to usurp those powers as well.

Using the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, as his sledgehammer, Trump has smashed an entire agency established and funded by Congress — the U.S. Agency for International Development — and threatens to eliminate another, the Education Department. Federal judges have repeatedly ordered the administration to disburse billions of dollars in congressionally authorized spending by USAID, much of it to provide lifesaving food, shelter and medical care in countries racked by war and disease. But by all accounts, only a trickle of that money is getting through.

The will of Congress, as expressed in its appropriations legislation, is being ignored. The will of the federal judiciary, as expressed in multiple court rulings, is being ignored. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vice President JD Vance declared last month. That is indeed true. But Trump is exercising power that does not legitimately belong to him.

That’s what is really happening while Trump distracts everyone with relentless bluster and a nonstop barrage of look-over-here pronouncements. He trumpets punishing tariffs against our trading partners, then cancels them, then reimposes them. He picks fights with our closest allies and makes a show of renaming the Gulf of Mexico. On Sunday, apropos of nothing, he declared on social media that the preemptive pardons President Joe Biden issued to members of the Jan. 6 Committee were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.” On Monday, he announced the immediate withdrawal of Secret Service protection for Biden’s son Hunter. And he floated the idea of serving as emcee in chief at the next Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.

I get it. Every day is a new episode of Trump’s reality show and another opportunity for boffo ratings. But each day is also another step in the weakening of the rule of law — and the undemocratic, un-American concentration of power in one man’s hands.