The Trump administration has blatantly ignored a Supreme Court ruling telling it to stop dismantling the federal program to protect undocumented immigrants brought here as children. Now — perhaps inevitably — a federal judge says the administration is ignoring another Supreme Court ruling that extends civil rights protections to gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.

This emerging pattern of a White House simply ignoring the high court is dangerous in ways that even congressional Republicans should understand. Yet they persist in their silence.

The Supreme Court in June ruled that the administration hadn't justified its moves to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and ordered it to stop. The program provides two-year renewable reprieves from deportation for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own, and who meet conditions including finishing school and having no criminal record. Some 650,000 young people are protected under the program, which is strongly supported by both parties.

Despite the court's ruling, the administration has continued undermining the program, rejecting all new applications and cutting the reprieve period to one year. Whatever position Americans take on the immigration issue, they should be uniformly outraged at any president who simply ignores a Supreme Court ruling. The implications are staggering.

Yet Republicans in Congress, as usual, haven't raised a peep in opposition to this latest degradation of the constitutional separation of powers. The administration, having clearly gotten away with it once, apparently sees no reason not to ignore the Supreme Court on another issue.

In June, the court voted 6-3 that standing civil rights protections against discrimination based on race or gender also protect people from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual preference. But that landmark ruling hasn't stopped the administration from continuing to roll back Obama-era anti-discrimination protections for medical patients.

This during a pandemic. It's as if President Donald Trump and his people literally sit around looking for ways to torment vulnerable Americans.

U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block has ordered the policy stopped, citing the Supreme Court ruling. "When the Supreme Court announces a major decision, it seems a sensible thing to pause and reflect on the decision's impact," Block wrote. "Since [the administration] has been unwilling to take that path voluntarily, the court now imposes it."

But what does that mean, exactly? This administration thumbs its nose at the Supreme Court, enabled by a Republican-controlled Senate that doesn't care. What can Block — or, for that matter, Chief Justice John Roberts — do if the White House once again pretends these rulings just didn't happen?

America's constitutional system relies on the presumption that the president will follow the law. This president regards himself above the law, which is one of the primary reasons why Nov. 3 cannot get here fast enough.

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