"If he does try to defy the courts, he is effectively declaring war on the United States of America," Maddow said.

President Donald Trump will ask the Supreme Court to allow him to fire the head of a government ethics watchdog agency in the first appeal from his litigious second term to reach the nation’s highest court.

The justices ruled last week that the president could not, for now, remove a government lawyer who leads the watchdog agency that protects whistle-blowers.