President Trump’s authority to deport Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act is facing skepticism from the federal bench. Mr. Trump has decried a district judge, James Boasberg, as a “Radical Left Lunatic” after he put the president’s deportations on hold. Now a panel of appeals court judges of the District of Columbia Circuit has declined to lift the pause imposed by Judge Boasberg. Does this signal rough seas ahead for Mr. Trump’s plans?

Our advice is against jumping to conclusions. That Mr. Trump has lost in a district court, never mind a politicized one, is not dispositive. Nor is the fact that he lost before a panel of riders of the District of Columbia Appeals Circuit. All sorts of high grade law professors were insisting that the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause was “self-executing.” The same ilk belittled presidential immunity. Mr. Trump had the last laugh on both.