Courts are sick of Trump’s crap, and goodbye to jackass Ed Martin
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Lower court judges are proving not to be big fans of President Donald Trump’s habit of issuing executive orders purporting to erase any parts of government he doesn’t like.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge John McConnell blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
Trump’s attempt to dismantle these institutions is not just an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, though it certainly is that. Per McConnell, it also violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Take Care Clause. That’s quite the hat trick!
Let’s start with the APA.
Despite what Trump thinks, agencies can’t just do whatever they want whenever they want. They have to provide a satisfactory explanation for their actions and show a connection between the facts and the agency’s decision. If they don’t, the court has to throw it out. Here, McConnell noted that the administration offered no reasonable explanation about how it decided which parts of these agencies to gut.
Now let’s consider the Take Care Clause.
Trump loves that part of Article II of the Constitution, which states that “the President shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
He sees it as a grant of power: The executive branch is tasked with enforcing the law and therefore can do whatever it wants. Weirdly, Trump doesn’t seem to think that the Take Care Clause requires him to uphold the Constitution. The issue in this case, as McConnell explained, is that federal agencies are created by statute—they’re literally part of the law. And Trump isn’t faithfully executing the law by trying to wipe it away with the stroke of a pen.
And last but not least, let’s talk about that pesky Constitution.
McConnell said that Trump’s executive order “disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated.”
If McConnell sounds exasperated, it’s because he already explained this to the Trump administration in a different case when he blocked one of Trump’s earliest and biggest funding freezes, explaining that the three branches of government are equal and that only Congress has the power of the purse.
It must be exhausting to explain basic high school civics to the president of the United States.
Judge Jamal Whitehead is sick of the Trump administration’s games
Would you like to see what happens when a judge has had it up to here with this administration?
Meet U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead. In February, Whitehead issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order that indefinitely suspended entry of refugees under the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program. The executive order functionally nullified USRAP, but USRAP was created by Congress, so it couldn’t be taken apart with Trump’s pen.
When the administration appealed to the Ninth Circuit, that court narrowed the injunction, saying that the Trump administration is only required to admit refugees who were conditionally approved and had “arranged and confirmable travel plans” by Jan. 20.
You won’t be surprised to learn that the Trump administration played games with this order, deciding that “arranged and confirmable travel plans” was somehow limited to people traveling within two weeks of Jan. 20. That’s about 160 people, versus the 12,000 with confirmed travel plans at later dates.
But there’s a small problem: There’s nothing anywhere, in anything, about a two-week limit, and Whitehead is not happy.
“This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says. The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit while it seeks such clarification,” he wrote.
Again, it must be exhausting to explain basic high school civics to the president of the United States,
Fare thee well, Ed Martin
It’s time to say goodbye to Trump’s original nominee for U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin.
Martin’s bombastic bullying was so off-putting that GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina broke ranks to say that he wouldn’t back the nomination. Yes, that’s the same man who voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
With Martin gone, who will launch nonsense voter fraud investigations, protect GOP House members from being arrested for domestic violence, or threaten people for criticizing Elon Musk?
Never fear. Trump’s new nominee, the fantastically unhinged Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, will likely do all of those things and more. Pirro is as big an election denier as Martin, and she’s still facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, a voting machine company she repeatedly smeared on Fox News. But in this administration, that’s probably a badge of honor.
Turns out bowing to the Trump administration is not good for business
It’s tough to keep track of all of the fancy law firms lining up to give Trump millions of dollars in free legal services, but one thing is certain: It is not going great for those firms.
New York’s oldest law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft, cut a deal with Trump last month, offering the customary $100 million pro bono bribe. What’s Trump’s beef with Cadwalader? They wouldn’t represent him in his criminal cases. Todd Blanche, who was a partner there, resigned and started his own firm just to work for the worst person alive.
Now, Cadwalader is hemorrhaging attorneys. People do not seem to love working for law firms that agree to wildly unconstitutional bargains with a madman. And with the news that Trump expects those firms to represent bad cops for free, things are only going to get worse.
Foreign donors for me but not for thee
Trump’s recent executive order on higher education insinuates that universities are in thrall to “foreign influence” and aren’t disclosing international gifts exceeding $250,000 as required. Trump says he needs this information to “protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
It’s his new basis for going after Harvard, and besides demanding all communications with foreign donors, the administration also wants records of any foreigner who was at Harvard in any role since 2010. It’s not clear what hassling random foreign former students and researchers has to do with anything, as it’s unlikely that those folks are secretly giving Harvard $250,000 each.
Contrast this deep concern about the malign influence of foreign money on schools with how Trump feels about foreign money in the pockets of his corrupt family and friends—and even himself. Foreign governments are literally buying access to Trump by steering millions to his scammy family meme coin. It’s not even remotely subtle.
The Trump administration has also paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens or companies to bribe foreign officials to get business deals.
Additionally, it’s dialing back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires anyone lobbying or advocating on behalf of a foreign entity to register with the government and disclose their activity. But Trump’s pals Paul Manafort and Elliott Broidy were charged with crimes related to FARA, so the solution is to make the law go away rather than make them follow the law.
Trump always resorts to the same old playbook: When he doesn’t like a law or a government agency, he simply gets rid of it.