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Rule of law is a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are:
Publicly promulgated
Equally enforced
Independently adjudicated
And consistent with international human rights principles
https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/overview-rule-law
"...government actions evidence a clear and disconcerting pattern. If a court issues a decision this administration does not agree with, the judge is targeted. If a lawyer represents parties in a dispute with the administration, or if a lawyer represents parties the administration does not like, lawyers are targeted. ... These actions highlight escalating governmental efforts to interfere with fair and impartial courts, the right to counsel and due process, and the freedoms of speech and association in our country.
High-ranking government officials (appointed and elected) have made repeated calls for the impeachment of judges who issue opinions with which the government does not agree. There have been calls to impeach “corrupt judges” with no effort to produce evidence of the so called “corruption.” These have been directed only at judges who have ruled against the government position."
"Instead, we see wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself, such as attacks on constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, the dismantling of USAID and the attempts to criminalize those who support lawful programs to eliminate bias and enhance diversity.
We have seen attempts at wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law. There are efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit, and social media announcements that disparage and appear to be motivated by a desire to inflame without any stated factual basis. This is chaotic. It may appeal to a few. But it is wrong. And most Americans recognize it is wrong. It is also contrary to the rule of law."
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/02/aba-supports-the-rule-of-law/
"... we can say with certainty that DOJ’s actions are corrupt. What used to be DOJ’s independence from political interference is now just a pile of ashes."
The corrupt use of Justice's levers of power
"Dempsey then repeatedly attacked police in the lower West Terrace tunnel for more than an hour, throwing poles and deploying bear spray at the line of officers protecting the Capitol. He used bear spray directly inside the mask of one officer, who testified that he thought he might die, and used a crutch to smash another officer’s head, giving him a concussion." Tom Jackman, Washingon Post
David Dempsey did this for Trump. He was pardoned.
What follows is a timeline of actions that highlight the alarming level of politicization and weaponization of the Department of Justice under the second Trump administration. Politicization includes the misuse of the Department’s powers for political purposes rather than the independent and impartial enforcement of the laws. Weaponization includes a deliberate and systematic misuse of the Department’s powers for political or personal purposes and in defiance of the rule of law.
The dozens of lawsuits fall into these categories.
In denying the Trump administration’s appeal, the 4th U.S. Circuit judges condemned the government for continuing to argue that it erred in transferring Abrego García to El Salvador but can’t do anything to bring him back.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” the court said. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
District Judge James Boasberg added that the administration risked making a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution.
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” the judge wrote.
Boasberg said he was launching contempt proceedings against the Trump administration.
Boasberg added that the administration could have the contempt findings erased from the record if it regains custody of those removed under the AEA. If it doesn’t, the judge said he will identify the Trump officials responsible for defying the court and pursue sanctions against them.
The Trump administration said Monday the U.S. government will not return a Maryland resident it erroneously sent to a hard labor prison in El Salvador.
The refusal comes despite the Supreme Court unanimously upholding a lower-court ruling ordering it to “facilitate” the man’s return to the U.S. It’s the latest and perhaps most troubling example of the Trump administration undermining the rule of law by appearing to flatly defy judicial orders.
Before Trump and Bukele’s meeting formally began, Trump told the Salvadoran president that he should build additional prisons because the “home-growns are next,” referring to U.S. citizens. During the meeting, Trump again said he would like to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador.
In a unanimous emergency ruling Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man wrongfully deported to a hard labor prison in El Salvador.
The Trump administration admitted in a court filing that his arrest and deportation was an “administrative error.” He has never been charged with a crime in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country.
President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top officials Thursday to investigate two of his former first-term officials who publicly refuted his baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and criticized his chaotic administration from within.
In his order against Krebs, Trump said he was targeting the former public servant for saying the 2020 election was not rigged.
Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who was a member of the select committee, described Trump’s orders against Krebs and Taylor as “Stalinesque.”
“The 2020 election wasn’t stolen and speaking the truth is only a crime in countries ruled by tyrants,” Cheney said.
“I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path,” Taylor said in a social media post Thursday. “Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is particularly devastating, pointing out an absurd contradiction: while all nine justices agreed that even alleged gang members deserve due process, the majority simultaneously dissolved an order preventing people from being trafficked without any process at all.
Against the backdrop of the U. S. Government’s unprecedented deportation of dozens of immigrants to a foreign prison without due process, a majority of this Court sees fit to vacate the District Court’s order. The reason, apparently, is that the majority thinks plaintiffs’ claims should have been styled as habeas actions and filed in the districts of their detention. In reaching that result, the majority flouts well-established limits on its jurisdiction, creates new law on the emergency docket, and elides the serious threat our intervention poses to the lives of individual detainees.
Basically: if we all agree that the government has to give everyone due process, why the fuck is the majority getting rid of the district court’s order that required exactly that?
It’s not just the majority’s callous disregard for human rights that’s shocking — it’s their seeming inability to even recognize the gravity of what’s at stake.
History will judge this moment harshly. When faced with an unprecedented executive power grab to disappear people to foreign slave labor camps, the Supreme Court’s majority responded not by defending fundamental constitutional rights, but by writing a technical manual for how to make human trafficking technically legal. In doing so, they’ve failed not just the immediate victims of this program, but their core duty to protect basic human rights and liberty against government overreach.
The same day in a separate case, the Fourth Circuit upheld an order requiring the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. Judge Stephanie Thacker cut through the procedural nonsense:
The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable
“The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” the court ruled. “The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”
The federal appeals panel said it denied the Trump administration’s order in part because its actions have “most assuredly violated the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
“It takes no small amount of imagination to understand that this is a path of perfect lawlessness, one that courts cannot condone,” Wilkinson said.
When most people make a serious mistake that harms someone else, they try to fix it. That’s basic human decency. But when the Trump administration admits to “mistakenly” trafficking someone with protected status to an El Salvador slave labor camp, their response is to mock the judge who ordered them to try to fix it.
Let’s be clear about what the administration is really claiming here: that they can grab anyone — anyone — off the street, and traffic them to a notorious slave labor camp in another country with no due process and there’s nothing that can be done. Even when the US government admits it made a mistake.
But this administration doesn’t care about mistakes. They don’t care about human trafficking innocent people. They don’t care that they’re sending people likely to their deaths in slave labor camps in another country by “accident.”
That’s just evil.
The administration isn’t just failing to fix a mistake — they’re establishing the principle that they can disappear anyone they want into foreign prisons, claim it was an “administrative error,” and face zero consequences. Their mocking response to the judge’s order isn’t just cruelty toward Abrego Garcia — it’s a declaration that they view themselves as completely unbound by the rule of law.
This administration has made it clear they’re not even willing to try — not because they can’t, but because they see “mistakes” like this as features of their system, not bugs. They’re telling us, through their actions and their sneering response to judicial oversight, that they intend to keep making these “mistakes.” That’s not just cruel or incompetent. That’s a sociopathic level of evil that this history books will remember. Future generations will question how anyone allowed this to happen.
The judge overseeing the case of a Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador has reiterated that the Trump administration must return him to the U.S.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with hundreds of other deportees from the U.S., is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which District Court Judge Paula Xinis described as “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world” that keeps people “in some of the most inhumane and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.”
“The officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his ‘status had changed,'” Xinis wrote in her order issued Friday, which was obtained by Politico.
As Xinis pointed out, the Justice Department has shown “no evidence” to back up its claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. Further, she said, by publicly labeling him as a gang member, the government put him at high risk of being targeted because as part of CECOT’s cruelty, the facility “intentionally mixes rival gang members.”
They additionally noted that Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of any crimes, nor has he been involved with law enforcement at any other times.
Xinis also noted that the administration’s “legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear.” But she emphasized that Abrego Garcia’s case is “categorically different” because “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.”
“Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.”
If you’re the President of the United States and you don’t like a law, you can apparently just… decide not to enforce it for a while? I mean, it’s not supposed to work that way, but for the past 74 days, that’s exactly what’s happened with the TikTok ban. Not just ignoring it quietly — Trump has explicitly declared we’re ignoring it. And today, he announced we’ll keep ignoring it for another 75 days.
Again, let’s be clear, because this is beyond ridiculous. The President has no authority to just declare “we’re ignoring this law for 75 days unless you do the thing I want.” But, that seems to be what a bunch of people are just going with. Astounding.
The fundamental problem is that we’ve stumbled into a world where federal laws have expiration dates determined by presidential mood swings.
We’re running an experiment to see if laws still matter when the president decides they don’t. Early results aren’t encouraging.
“Everything here smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Judge Ho wrote in his ruling.
Virtually the moment he was charged, Adams began making blatant overtures to the Trump administration, essentially prostrating himself before the incoming president in the hopes of receiving some sort of reprieve. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the groveling was so egregious that some in Trump’s administration mocked Adams as “thirsty” for a pardon.
In February, during a joint Fox News interview with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, Adams was asked about allegations that he had “offered to help with the migration problem in the immigration agenda in exchange for the case being dropped.”
“That’s quid-pro-quo,” Adams replied. “That’s a crime.”
Homan immediately undermined the mayor, telling Fox News that “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on a couch. … I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
This is what happens when you replace due process with authoritarian expediency.
It’s the kind of thinking that leads directly to “administrative errors” that destroy innocent lives.
The entire point of the rule of law in a civilized society is that we’re better than that.
Let’s be crystal clear: this wasn’t a “deportation” — deportation requires due process. This was human trafficking, plain and simple. A U.S. resident with legal protection was grabbed by government agents and forcibly transferred to a foreign labor camp.
The government’s argument is essentially: “Yes, we illegally trafficked someone we knew we shouldn’t have touched, but since we’ve already done it and he’s in a foreign prison, U.S. courts are powerless to help.”
This statement reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both law and logic that would be merely laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. If merely being accused of breaking a law strips you of due process rights, then there is no rule of law at all.
Under this framework, government agents need only accuse someone of a crime to justify trafficking them to a foreign prison camp. No evidence required. No hearing needed. Just an accusation.
This isn’t just wrong — it’s an explicit endorsement of exactly the kind of authoritarian system that Justice Jackson warned would “drift into oppression.” It creates a perfect circular logic: you lose your right to due process because you’re accused of a crime, and you have no way to challenge that accusation because you’ve lost your right to due process.
This is the line that due process draws: between a government bound by law and one ruled by whim, between justice and terror, between civilization and barbarism.
When Trump, Homan, Leavitt, and Spartz argue against due process, they aren’t just attacking a legal principle — they’re attacking the very foundation of the rule of law itself.
Their vision of America is one where government agents can disappear anyone they want based on nothing more than an accusation, where “administrative errors” are features rather than bugs, and where the mere act of questioning their actions is treated as treason.
They’ve made it crystal clear that they don’t believe in due process, the rule of law, or any coherent moral philosophy beyond raw power used to inflict suffering on those they deem unworthy of basic human dignity.
This isn’t just un-American. It’s a deliberate embrace of the exact authoritarian evil that America was supposed to resist.
America’s largest law firms are facing an existential choice that will define not just their legacies, but potentially the future of constitutional democracy: fight against clearly unconstitutional executive orders designed to destroy the ability of anyone to fight back, or surrender to authoritarianism. While that might sound hyperbolic, the evidence shows that it’s absolutely true.
The choice facing America’s law firms today isn’t just about business survival — it’s about whether they’ll be remembered as defenders of constitutional democracy or enablers of its destruction. The cowards at Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss may think they’re making sophisticated business decisions, but history has seen this playbook before. When authoritarian regimes consolidate power, they always start by neutralizing those who might stand in their way. And history remembers who helped them do it.
As the Keker partners put it: “This is not hyperbole.” When future generations study how American democracy either survived or crumbled in 2025, they’ll look at what the legal profession did in this moment. The firms that fought will be remembered as heroes. The ones that caved? Well, being a law firm that surrendered to Hitler didn’t look any better in the history books just because they called it a “rational business decision.”
but their math seriously underestimates the amount of harm being done even in financial terms, the incalculable harm that comes from such a severe Constitutional violation being tolerated, which no amount of money can ever compensate, and the fact that it will be taxpayers—or, in other words, the plaintiff victims themselves—who will have to pay whatever compensation might eventually be ordered. Everything DOGE has been doing amounts to irreparable harm, and far beyond any sort of harm the Executive could experience if his and Musk’s power were carefully tested before letting it loose on the country.
The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador
Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody
“If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”
Abrego Garcia received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.
Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record.
He works full time as a union sheet-metal apprentice, has complied with requirements to check in annually with ICE, and cares for his 5-year-old son, who has autism and a hearing defect, and is unable to communicate verbally.
His wife spotted her husband in news photographs released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on the morning of March 16, after a U.S. district judge had told the Trump administration to halt the flights. The image showed Salvadoran guards in black ski masks frog-marching him into the prison, with his head shoved down toward the floor.
The deportation of a protected-status holder has even stunned some government attorneys I’ve been in touch with who are tracking the case, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. “What. The. Fuck,” one texted me.
Innocent (in a Brutal Prison) Abroad
If this reckless and lawless action by the administration is allowed to stand, it’s not just the immigration laws that are meaningless; it’s the rule of law that is meaningless.
There’s been much discussion in recent months of what the other branches would do, and of how the public would react, if the Trump administration were brazenly to defy the law and attempts by U.S. courts to uphold the law.
That’s no longer a hypothetical question. That future is now. The crisis is upon us. We’ll be judged as a nation by how we respond.
So, we get what we’re seeing here: the unlawful arrest and detainment of a legal US resident just because ICE knows that, under this regime, it will never really be held accountable for its actions.
In many of the cases listed, administrative arrest warrants are being written after arrests have already taken place, using backdated forms that contain pre-written signatures that don’t match the names of the arresting officers. In other cases, crucial information that would pertain to the arrest supposedly justified by the post-facto warrant is missing completely, including the justification for arrest
ICE has refused to comment on its warrantless arrest and detainment of an American citizen
ICE isn’t looking for dangerous foreign criminals. All it’s looking for is certain skin tones.
Milton was the founder and CEO of Nikola, an electric- and hydrogen-powered truck company that went bankrupt.
“Milton made false claims regarding nearly all aspects of Nikola’s business,” the Justice Department said when he was sentenced.
Donald Trump explained why he pardoned Trevor Milton: “He supported Trump,” Trump told reporters. “He liked Trump."
The rulings barred the administration from carrying out punishments described in the executive orders, like banning their lawyers from government buildings, meetings, or jobs.
Judge Bates said he found that action “disturbing” and “troubling.”
The White House has signaled that more firms are in the president’s cross hairs, particularly those that employ lawyers who have worked on investigations into Mr. Trump or on causes that his supporters object to.
“They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” Mr. Trump said, adding that they were asking, “‘Where do I sign? Where do I sign?’”
The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough
If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.
Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.
This won’t stop unless everyone speaks up and demands that the government respect the rights of everyone. These are bullying and intimidation tactics of weak insecure bullies, who know they cannot win in the marketplace of ideas. They are scared and pathetic, knowing that their beliefs are bad, and that the public doesn’t support them. Thus, their only response is an impotent rage, an attempt to replace respect and fair treatment with authoritarian tactics in hopes of intimidating people into silence and capitulation.
These are scary times, but people need to stop cowering. They need to speak up. They need to show up. They need to say that this is not the America any of us were taught to believe in. This is not the America of freedom and rights.
To anyone who has watched Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in action, all of this was far too familiar. For years the Turkish government has used “support for terrorism” as a sweeping charge to justify jailing its political enemies. Crucially, this support need not involve any action or association with an actual terrorist group. More often than not, it simply involves expressing an opinion critical of Erdoğan or his government.
What made this approach so effective was that Erdoğan usually focused on marginalized or unpopular groups. Because much of the public was hostile to these groups, mainstream politicians played along. Now, after a decade, Erdoğan has been emboldened to jail his main political rival and presidential contender on the same spurious charges. Turkish citizens have rallied in protest—but it may be too late.
The Trump administration, like Erdoğan’s government, has started its consolidation of power by going after minorities with dissenting opinions.
Likewise, in arresting student activists, Trump is counting on the support of mainstream Americans who hate Hamas more than they respect the Constitution. So far, Erdoğan seems to have calculated correctly, and he has reaped the benefits. If Americans remain silent in the face of mounting detentions, they will ensure that Trump does as well.
The DOJ’s questionable assertions in court were backed by Trump’s calls to impeach the judge handling the case, something that actually managed to push Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to temporarily set aside his personal “conservative views” to remind the president that the proper response to an injunction Trump doesn’t agree with is the appellate courts, not batshit crazy demands that judges be put of out business.
This administration operates wholly without shame. And now it’s pushing forward with its plan to operate without any form of internal oversight. The almost-nonexistent pushback from Democrats has been ineffectual at best, and disgustingly subservient at worst. This nation is being taken down from the inside. Trying to pretend this can be undone following the next election assumes there’s going to be another presidential election, which isn’t something I’d be willing to put my money on given how things are going now.
Let that sink in: they authorized bombing a civilian apartment building because a target’s girlfriend lived there. This isn’t just reckless — it’s a likely violation of international humanitarian law, which explicitly prohibits attacks directed at civilian objects. The fact that these officials casually discussed targeting civilian infrastructure in an unsecured chat group — while including a journalist by mistake — demonstrates a shocking combination of moral bankruptcy and operational incompetence.
This reckless disregard for both operational security and international law isn’t just dangerous — it’s potentially criminal. And while the administration tries to deflect with absurd arguments about the difference between “war” and “attack” plans, the reality is that they’ve provided documentary evidence of planning what appears to be a war crime, sharing classified operational details in an unsecured channel, and then lying about it to Congress.
Using Signal to dodge the Federal Records Act’s requirements is, well, illegal. The law is quite clear about this.
And then there’s this simple fact: this Signal group chat only came to light through sheer incompetence. How many other potentially illegal chat groups exist where officials remembered to double-check their participant lists?
Big law firms—especially those now under attack by the Trump administration—do crucial work, representing nonprofits and individual clients who face major legal consequences, both civil and criminal, for resisting Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law.
Without lawyers to represent them, those opposing Trump’s policies will, in effect, be legally disarmed, allowing his authoritarian impulses to run rampant.
Little, if any, of Trump’s actions here are lawful.
But what’s really going on here, quite obviously, is that these firms have attempted to fight Trump and have represented clients Trump and his voters disapprove of. That is hardly a sin; representing an unpopular client is essential to any fair system. But Trump and his allies don’t want a fair system; they want a system reminiscent of China’s or Russia’s, that scares lawyers away from these clients and disables their opponents from bringing legal challenges against their efforts to rule by executive fiat.
Trump’s actions are an attempt, bluntly speaking, to tilt the scales of justice by using the raw power of government coercion.
The claim here is the old-fashioned one: we must trade rights for security. And the outcome is also the traditional one: if we buy this argument, we lose both. If anyone can be deported at any time for no reason, then we are obviously not only less free but also less secure, as individuals and as a nation.
In a constitutional republic, such as our own, freedom and security alike are grounded in the rule of law. In a rule-of-law state, we can count on the government not apprehending us and deporting us without due process of law and without providing some justification. This practical dignity of our bodies is called habeas corpus, which means that authorities must provide a justification to a court for taking control of your physical body. Logically and historically this is at the foundation of our entire tradition of rights. The individual body comes first; the government must have a good legal reason to confine it.
For this very reason, we have a number of laws, such as the Federal Records Act, whose purpose is to make sure that we know what our government is doing. It is not just that we want them to have a reason for seizing our bodies. It is that we want to be able to head off the kind of government that would plot to do such a thing for tyrannical reasons.
This logic of freedom and tyranny is why government officials are required to record their interactions.
Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.
Even as the Musk-Trump people continue to say that we must sacrifice our rights for national security, they are also starting to say that they find it worthwhile to violate national security in order to have the tools that allow them to violate our rights. In Signalgate, we see the shift from the conventional excuse for authoritarian practices to an open embrace of tyranny for its own sake.
Mike Johnson: “We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court.”
Johnson floating the idea of eliminating federal courts is an alarming escalation of the far right’s attacks on the judiciary. “These are not ordinary times,” American Bar Association (ABA) President William R. Bay said in February. “The rule of law itself is at stake.”
Meanwhile, House Republicans have launched impeachment efforts against federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration. This effort is backed by Elon Musk, who has called for the judges’ removal and donated to lawmakers supporting impeachment proceedings.
“Threatening judges with impeachment or retribution for upholding their oaths of office and doing their jobs under the Constitution is an act of outlaw tyranny, not constitutional government.”
There is only the end goal that has been demanded by the mad king. Any norms or rules that get in the way of the goal are to be routed around in as contemptuous a manner possible.
The Trump administration is full of shit. They know they’re full of shit. They know we know they’re full of shit.
If any judicial oversight can be routed around simply by putting a few complicit signatures on a piece of paper that says “state secrets,” then there simply is no judicial oversight.
And, in that negation of a coequal branch of government, you have the end of our Republic.
Under 18 USC 793, “gross negligence” in handling defense information carries up to ten years in prison. And this case goes way beyond mere negligence — they deliberately chose to conduct classified military planning on an unauthorized platform, then accidentally broadcast it to a journalist. That’s before we even get to the numerous other laws likely violated here.
the FBI won’t be spending nearly as much time investigating domestic terrorism, most likely because most domestic terrorists are the kind of people Trump will immediately pardon if they’re convicted
Either way, the FBI will no longer be investigating the sort of terrorism that routinely involves Trump supporters.
The administration’s attempts to characterize this as a routine “deportation” matter represent perhaps their most cynical wordplay yet (and one the media should stop repeating, though that’s a different issue).
Deportation is a legal process with established due process rights. What happened here was something far darker: the US government engaging in what amounts to human trafficking, shipping people to El Salvador as forced labor without any due process.
Reports show that many of the deportees have no gang connections at all. Any competent law enforcement official would recognize these allegations as nonsense.
But the most chilling display comes in their response to judicial oversight: when a federal judge attempts to restore basic due process rights, the administration not only ignores his order, but the Secretary of State publicly mocks it while coordinating with their partner in human trafficking. This isn’t just contempt of court — it’s contempt for the entire concept of legal constraints on executive power.
when government lawyers treat the judicial branch as a system to be cleverly gamed rather than an essential check on power, they’re not just failing their professional obligations. They’re actively participating in the dismantling of judicial review itself.
President Donald Trump is at war with the rule of law in the United States. His assault is already the most hostile and sustained political attack on America’s legal and law-enforcement institutions since the Civil War.
As the former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a well-known conservative jurist, said recently, Trump has “launched a full-frontal assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of justice, and the entire legal profession.”
Trump has used this authoritarian approach, undergirded by his legendary shamelessness, to break through every line of constitutional and moral defense—impeachment, elections, even the humiliation of arrest and conviction—that would otherwise restrain a rogue president (or, for that matter, any ordinary American felon). The center is not holding, and the flanks are collapsing. Congress is fleeing the field.
Within days of the election, the incoming administration began planning to seize the institutions capable of exercising legal and physical force against citizens—the Russians call them “the power ministries”—such as the Defense Department, the national-intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, and the FBI.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel are not typical appointees. All of them see their first duty as loyalty to Trump, not to the Constitution.
The dismantling of America’s constitutional government is under way.
“There were planeloads of people,” Millett said. “There were no procedures in place to notify people. Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here,” she added, a reference to when the law was invoked during World War II.
Over the past two months, the rule of law in this country has been replaced by the rule of whim. The whim is not just that of one man but of a loose cabal of Cabinet members and “special advisers” who are combining revenge fantasies with small-government dreams, xenophobic visions, and cryptocurrency delusions. And so former national-security officials have had their security clearances revoked, government agencies have been fed into the wood chipper, “alien enemies” have been deported despite a judge’s court order, and a vaccine denier and pseudoscience champion has been confirmed as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
this week came the first official finding that Musk and DOGE appeared to be unlawfully messing with agencies. It came in one of the other earlier cases, Does 1-26 v. Musk and relates solely to their actions taken in furtherance of unlawfully shutting down USAID.
The gist of the plaintiffs’ argument is that when Musk and DOGE acted to eliminate USAID, a federal agency created by statute and where the ability to undo it has been reserved for Congress can undo it, it unlawfully “usurped Congress’s authority to create and abolish offices.” [p.37].
" ... when, however, the Executive Branch takes actions in support of the stated intent to abolish an agency, such as permanently closing the agency headquarters and engaging in mass terminations of personnel and contractors, those actions conflict with Congress’s constitutional authority to prescribe if and how an agency shall exist in form and function.”
“disclosure of personal information is of greater concern where some Plaintiffs, such as J. Doe 1, are or have previously been posted overseas in high-risk areas and have expressed concern about ‘highly sensitive personal information’ such as ‘foreign contacts’ and ‘a safety pass phrase’ being released from personnel and security clearance files.”
“the public interest is specifically harmed by Defendants’ actions, which have usurped the authority of the public’s elected representatives in Congress to make decisions on whether, when, and how to eliminate a federal government agency,” and because these likely unconstitutional actions have already put plaintiffs in physical jeopardy. [p.62]
The court addressed DOGE’s IT-related activities, requiring it to reestablish all email, payment, and other systems to their functional states. [p.64]
But with DOGE it is different because what it is finally starting to dawn is the judicial recognition that DOGE has no constitutionally-appointed governmental power. And these cases, rather than being about the government using its lawful power badly, as most constitutional challenges are, are really about an unlawful power being allowed to do anything.
DOGE “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government”
The data given to DOGE includes the addresses, medical and work histories, tax, banking and citizenship information, benefit amounts, and family records of every person in the United States with a Social Security number or who has applied for benefits. DOGE officials were granted access to this data over the objections of Flick and former Social Security Commissioner Michelle King, who resigned in protest over the episode.
Judge Hollander found Thursday that plaintiffs are “likely to succeed” in their claim that the administration has violated the Privacy Act.
Today, a federal court has blocked Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) from unlawfully accessing millions of Americans’ Social Security records—ordering, for the first time since Trump took office, that DOGE delete and disgorge of every piece of data it has wrongfully seized. This ruling underscores the grave legal violations and rebukes the government’s unlawful data grab.
The decision requires DOGE to return or destroy all private Social Security data it accessed, recognizing that stopping DOGE’s future access to the data is not enough to protect Americans. DOGE’s intrusion has already put millions at risk of identity theft, financial fraud, and doxxing. The court emphasized that the continued possession of unlawfully obtained data creates an ongoing threat that cannot be overlooked.
In an unprecedented move that flatly violates federal law, Donald Trump on Tuesday fired both Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission. The illegal purge represents a direct assault on the independence of the consumer protection agency.
Illegally firing both Slaughter and Bedoya once again shows that in this Trump administration even the most basic safeguards are gone, and anyone who does not kiss Trump and Musk’s asses at every moment is going to be gone.
The Supreme Court could theoretically step in to defend Humphrey’s Executor. But they won’t. Congress could theoretically exercise oversight. But they won’t. The press could explain how this is a huge attack on the checks and balances of government. But they won’t.
Without even the fig leaf of token opposition to maintain the illusion of normalcy, we can finally admit what we’re actually dealing with: a corrupt and broken system of pretend checks and balances that only worked until someone decided not to be checked or balanced.
The president’s contempt for due process has coincided with other actions that are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes: attempting to hollow out the nation’s civil service, specifically through Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); intimidating universities; and targeting journalists while amping up a campaign of garish state propaganda against disfavored groups.
During the past two months of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s power grabs, it has been clear the second Trump administration is building up to a confrontation with the American courts system — one that would trigger a full-blown constitutional crisis. That moment of truth has arrived.
The Trump administration flew several planes with hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to deport them, apparently without due process, to a mega prison in El Salvador — despite a federal judge ordering them not to do so, and to turn around any planes en route if necessary.
Trump’s refusal to heed the judge’s demand not to deport migrants to El Salvador — as well as the president’s decision to ship migrants, who have not been convicted of anything, to a country and prison notorious for civil rights abuses — is a huge escalation, and an alarmingly direct test of the U.S. Constitution and America’s system of checks and balances.
Another close Trump adviser simply says that the president’s ultimate leverage against certain judges who try to stand in the way of his agenda is that the judiciary does not command an army, while the president of the United States does.
This would all be bad enough if it were a wildly lawless but isolated incident. But it isn’t. It fits a broader fact pattern of the restored President Trump, whose administration is now operating on the legal principle of: “What are you gonna do about it?”
“The people in the administration [who are] deliberately violating a court order and instructing others to ignore it — that is criminal contempt of court and potential obstruction of justice,” Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, told Rolling Stone last week. “It’s not just lawless; that would be a crime. But even if it is a crime, that doesn’t mean this Department of Justice is going to prosecute it. They’ve basically decided the Trump administration is above the law. Everybody is watching closely, looking for the Andrew Jackson moment, when they openly say they are going to defy the court. It seems as if they’re getting increasingly close to that line.”
Just days later, the Trump administration has reached that line and is prepared to blow right through it. The constitutional crisis is here.
All DOJ employees know that they take an oath to fight for the Constitution and democracy, not for a particular leader. Past Attorneys General have taken pains to underscore this duty.
AG Pam Bondi said nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or even justice per se: she spoke almost solely in terms of loyalty for (her) particular leader
Trump's speech was a political rally from start to finish, complete with songs from Trump’s campaign and comments about political topics well outside the realm of DOJ and justice policies. Trump slammed former DOJ officials as “scum” and unleashed attacks on private attorneys. And then he did the unthinkable: he called for people he perceives as political enemies to be “held accountable,” even “jailed.”
I know this isn’t something new for Trump to say; but to say it in the halls of DOJ, the place where the power of “accountability” lies, is a tipping point into autocratic territory.
Trump is asking for the machinery of American justice to launch baseless investigations, to harass, and even possibly to criminally charge people at his whim.
Republicans with any conscience and regard for the rule of law must take it as the giant step too far that it is.
And all of us simply cannot let ourselves become numb to this rhetoric.
The sitting president traveled to the Justice Department and accused the press of breaking the law by criticizing him. Brad Heath
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development was likely unconstitutional on multiple fronts—including the role Elon Musk played to orchestrate it.
The president’s order to bar transgender service members is likely unconstitutional, ruled a federal judge
Reyes highlighted that among the plaintiffs pushing back are service members who have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, and have earned more than 80 decorations including a Bronze Star, two Global War on Terrorism Service Medals, numerous Meritorious Service Medals, and more.
The administration's decision to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants despite an explicit federal court order represents more than just another norm violation or controversial policy choice. It marks a moment when the constitutional order itself has been directly and publicly challenged by the executive branch.
There's no ambiguity here. No complex constitutional debate. No differing interpretations of a vague ruling. A federal judge explicitly ordered that deportations be halted. The administration proceeded anyway, then publicly gloated about it.
If this isn't a constitutional crisis, then I don't know what is.
When a president can simply ignore court orders he finds inconvenient, while declaring non-existent “wars” to access emergency powers, we have moved beyond constitutional governance entirely. We have entered a realm where the executive operates not within a system of checks and balances, but above it.
The video released by El Salvador shows the deported men—their guilt never established in any court—being treated like convicted criminals: shackled, heads shaved, forced to kneel, and placed in a notorious prison facility. These images should shake us from complacency. This is what governance looks like when it's no longer constrained by law.''
This isn't about immigration policy or border security. It's about whether we still have a government of laws rather than men. It's about whether presidential power remains constrained by courts and Congress, or whether we've entered an era where such constraints exist only on paper.
The administration isn't hiding its contempt for legal limitations. They're not even pretending to respect judicial authority. They're openly celebrating their ability to act beyond the reach of courts, to implement policies that a federal judge explicitly prohibited. The brazenness isn't accidental—it's the point. It's a demonstration of power unconstrained, a message that the executive now considers itself above judicial review.
This is the moment when the abstract concerns about democratic erosion become concrete. When the theoretical worries about constitutional breakdown manifest in real deportations of real people in direct violation of real court orders. When the rule of law transforms from a fundamental principle into an optional guideline, observed only when convenient.
This is not normal politics. This is not partisan disagreement. This is constitutional crisis in its most literal form—a situation where the basic functioning of our constitutional system has been directly challenged by the executive branch.
If we cannot recognize this moment for what it is—if we cannot respond to this direct challenge to constitutional governance with appropriate alarm and action—then we have already surrendered more than we realize.
This violated fundamental rights enumerated in the Constitution. Everyone in the United States has the right to a fair trial with due process of law.
The deportation was done in violation of a court order, according to a plan to undo the rule of law. This means that the action was not only specifically illegal, but designed as a challenge to the rule of law as such.
Immigration and emigration are matters of legislation, the responsibility for which is delegated by the Constitution to Congress. In organizing a deportation outside the bounds of any particular law, and indeed outside the bounds of law in general, the executive is not only challenging Congress but disputing its purpose. The deportation action, in other words, is a direct blow not only to the judiciary but to the legislative branch of the federal government. It is an assertion of total executive authority that has no basis in law or tradition.
If members of the executive branch are allowed to issue truth claims that have the consequence that human beings leave the United States, we are in a dictatorship. If we accept that the executive branch can simply deport anyone they call a "foreign alien terrorist," then none of us has any rights.
The language that is being used has a specific resonance, which, historically, has been used to change regime type. There is a long history of this, all around the world, including Hitler in 1933 and Stalin in 1934.
This deportation was planned as a political spectacle. The deportees were carefully chosen, as was the language used to describe them. The messaging was obviously coordinated in advance. And the entire humiliating procedure was carried out before cameras that were already in place. The videos that are being distributed are not some assemblage of footage caught haphazardly by cell phones. They are the result of fixed cameras, set in place in advance, with camera operators awaiting the action. The result is propaganda film worthy of the 1930s, in which the Leader determines what is true and what is false and who is human and who is not ("monsters") through a procedure of charismatic violence. If you watch these films, please consider that they are meant to draw you in to a politics of us and them, to a world of lying and hatred beyond law, to a new regime that can come to replace our republic -- but only with your assent.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged gang members. The law, which has been enacted only three times in U.S. history—during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II—grants the president authority to deport non-citizens without appearing before a judge, among other wartime authorities.
Shortly after, a federal judge ordered to temporarily halt it.
"Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States however that is accomplished. Make sure it's complied with immediately," U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg said.
two senior White House officials acknowledged the administration was aware of and ignored the court order
"The Trump administration's intent to use a wartime authority for immigration enforcement is as unprecedented as it is lawless. It may be the administration's most extreme measure yet, and that is saying a lot."
"The president is invoking the Alien Enemies Act to try to dispense with due process."
"This power grab is flagrantly illegal. The Alien Enemies Act may be used only during declared wars or armed attacks on the United States by foreign governments."
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor who had a valid visa, was expelled in apparent defiance of a court order.
There is a shortage of American doctors working in Dr. Alawieh’s area of specialty, transplant nephrology. Foreign-born physicians play an important role in the field, according to experts.
Her patients included individuals awaiting transplants and those dealing with the complex conditions that can occur after a transplant, Dr. Bayliss said. He called Dr. Alawieh “a very talented, very thoughtful physician.”
As the courts deliver a series of setbacks to his dramatic attempt to change the federal government without congressional approval, President Donald Trump’s supporters are echoing some of the rhetoric and actions that elsewhere have preceded attacks on the judiciary.
Trump’s supporters in Congress have raised the specter of impeaching judges who have ruled against the administration. Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump backer whose Department of Government Efficiency has ended up in the crosshairs of much of the litigation, has regularly called for removing judges on his social media site, X.
“If this is the approach the executive wants to take, it’s going to provoke a fight. Not everybody is going to be content to be a doormat the way Congress is.”
“Threats against judges are threats against constitutional government. Everyone should be taking this seriously,” said Judge Richard Sullivan, whom Trump in his first term appointed to the federal appeals court in New York.
“This is a basic authoritarian instinct,” said Steven Levitsky, coauthor of “How Democracies Die” and a Harvard political scientist. “You cannot have a democracy where the elected government can do whatever it wants.”
On March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador. They carried 261 men deported from the United States. Most were Venezuelans—people who fled one nightmare only to be thrust into another. They were designated as “gang members” by the current administration and deported with little or no due process. No trials. No evidence presented. Just labeled, processed, and removed.
These men—human beings with names, histories, dreams—were marched through a gauntlet of armed guards, beaten, stripped naked, shaved, and thrown into overcrowded cells. A photojournalist on the scene described watching men age a decade in two hours. He watched as one young man sobbed, “I'm not a gang member. I'm gay. I'm a barber.” This man was slapped for his tears, beaten for his vulnerability.
And all of this—every slap, every sob, every stolen dignity—stamped with American approval. Coordinated with American officials. Executed with American efficiency.
I just don't know what kind of morals people have, that they seek to be feared. That's not manly. That's not something to be proud of. It's crude. It's barbarism.
Being feared isn't strength. True strength lies in being just when it would be easier to be cruel. In maintaining our principles when they're inconvenient. In seeing the humanity in others even when it would be politically expedient to deny it.
This is the true test of what being an American means: not what we proclaim when standing tall at a ballgame or wrapping ourselves in patriotic symbols, but what we permit to be done to the vulnerable when we think no one is watching.
In recent weeks, as Trump and his top donor and advisor Elon Musk have torn through the federal government in a reckless, unilateral manner, some federal judges have stepped in to try to put a halt to their destruction. The administration’s response hasn’t been to accept the rulings and orders, or scale back its assault on the balance of power that has held the government together for centuries — but rather to repeatedly demand the conservative Supreme Court’s assistance, and relentlessly attack the judges while claiming Trump should be able to decree whatever he wishes without oversight.
Generally speaking, if a judge says this to you, your client is unlikely to succeed in their case:
“This may be amusing in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the Queen of Hearts yells ‘Off with their heads!’ at annoying subjects… but this cannot be the reality we are living under.”
The judge’s literary reference captured perfectly why this unprecedented attempt to destroy a law firm for representing political opponents represents such a dangerous assault on constitutional principles.
The sheer volume of constitutional violations flowing from this administration has created a kind of normalization of lawlessness — where even the most brazen attacks on democratic institutions get treated as mere boundary-pushing rather than the authoritarian power grabs they are.
This case represents more than just another example of the administration’s willingness to fabricate justifications for punishing its perceived enemies. It’s a stark reminder that the judiciary remains one of the few institutions still willing to call out raw authoritarianism for what it is. The question is: how long can courts hold the line when the attacks on constitutional principles grow more brazen by the day?
A federal judge has ruled that tens of thousands of employees summarily fired by the Trump administration must be rehired
Judge William Alsup ruled that the federal government had illegally fired thousands of probationary employees across six federal agencies in a “sham” operation to circumvent employment laws.
“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie.”
World Liberty Financial (WLF), the Trump family’s fledgling crypto venture, has explored taking a financial stake in the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange Binance. If it wasn’t shady enough, the discussions are reportedly taking place as Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been courting the Trump administration for a presidential pardon.
The Trump family has been cashing in at every opportunity since the president’s election win in November. Where his first term was riddled with notable transactions to his hotels and resorts, this time around the Trump’s are practically flaunting every new business venture that leverages their White House connections.
Sources who spoke to The Wall Street Journal said the company has been encouraged by the Trump administration’s treatment of Chinese-born investor Justin Sun, especially as it pertains to securing a pardon for Zhao. Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked a court to pause a fraud lawsuit against Sun, who just happened to invest over $30 million in World Liberty Financial last November.
In January, Puck News reported that Amazon had agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. According to a report from Wired earlier this month, the rich and interested can pay $1 million to have dinner with the president at his Mar-a-Lago resort, or $5 million to secure a private audience.
The president is theoretically barred from engaging in private business ventures while occupying the White House, but the Trumps have become masters of milking their side hustles.
The Internal Revenue Service’s acting chief counsel, William Paul, has been removed from his role at the agency and replaced by Andrew De Mello, an attorney in the chief counsel’s office who is deemed supportive of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency
Paul was demoted from his position because he clashed with the DOGE’s alleged push to share tax information with multiple agencies
Government officials across the Treasury Department, the Social Security Administration and other agencies have seen a wave of retirements, resignations and demotions for voicing concern about DOGE access to sensitive systems and taxpayer data.
A federal judge considering the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of climate research grants worth billions of dollars told government lawyers they had to produce “some kind of evidence” of wrongdoing to back up such drastic actions.
“Chilling the lawyers who represent those people hurts the rule of law because when the government can’t be legally opposed, the law provides no protections to anyone and you start to live in an autocracy.”
A basic democratic norm is that laws are implemented as they are written. Another norm is that the implementation of the law be even-handed, applied equally to all groups. The idea that some groups would become less eligible for public support or fired from their job simply because of their presumed partisan affiliation feels obviously undemocratic.
In short: Trump and Musk are engaged in a broad-based downsizing of government, using that downsizing to selectively target their enemies, while expanding their political power by trading exceptions to the downsizing.
The pardon “demonstrates an open hostility and contempt for accountability and the rule of law."
"Kelsey’s actions, which included coordinating with special-interest-funded outside groups, using straw donors, and funneling soft money to bolster his federal campaign, violated laws designed to combat corruption and maintain transparency in our elections. His pardon sends a message that there will be no consequences for such brazen misconduct.”
Can the Government Unilaterally “Revoke” Khalil’s Status as a Green Card Holder?
No.
Neither Rubio nor anyone else in our government can simply “revoke” the status of a lawful permanent resident, and thereby render them subject to deportation. The immigration laws give lawful permanent residents (“LPRs” or “green card” holders), “the privilege of residing permanently in the United States” (emphasis added). Talk of “revoking” Khalil’s “visa” is thus extremely misleading. Lawful permanent residency is not a visa at all, it is a status. And that status cannot be unilaterally revoked.
That feature of the government’s reported claim against Khalil suggests a constitutional problem with the government’s case. The Supreme Court has long held that a person cannot constitutionally be punished under a criminal statute that is so vague as to deny a person notice of the conduct that could leave them criminally liable. Such statutes are “void for vagueness,” a violation of due process.
Indeed, despite its rare use, section 237(a)(4)(C) has already been found unconstitutional by a federal court on this ground. That court concluded that the very statute itself was unconstitutionally vague because “there is no conceivable way that an alien could know, ex-ante, how to conform his or her activities to the requirements of the law… [I]t is even less likely that an alien could know that his or her mere presence here would or could cause adverse foreign policy consequences when our foreign policy is unpublished, ever-changing, and often highly confidential.”
it is unconstitutional—a violation of due process—to deport Khalil under this statute.
The Supreme Court long ago stated, without qualification, that “[f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”
When a president uses executive power to not just blacklist but effectively destroy a major law firm, solely for representing political opponents, it means he’s given up any pretense that he’s not an authoritarian hellbent on destroying anyone who opposes him through any means necessary.
The order explicitly attacks Perkins Coie for challenging laws in court. Think about that: the White House is using executive power to punish lawyers for filing legitimate court challenges to potentially unconstitutional laws. That’s not just an attack on free speech — it’s an attack on the very concept of constitutional checks and balances.
A federal judge ruled Monday that President Donald Trump’s extensive freeze to foreign aid spending through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) usurped Congress’s constitutional authority to decide how money can be spent by the government.
Ali criticized the defendants “unbridled view” of executive power, saying it “flouts multiple statutes whose constitutionality is not in question” and the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
“Asserting this ‘vast and generally unreviewable’ executive power and diminution of Congressional power, Defendants do not cite any provision of Article I or Article II of the Constitution,” the judge wrote.
The Maryland judge found Trump’s diversity-related orders likely violate First and Fifth Amendment rights.
“They are just pretending it didn’t happen, it seems.”
The episode is part of a broader pattern in which the second Trump administration has operated under the impression that judges’ orders and rulings don’t much matter.
Trump admitted he thinks he can break any law he wants to — so long as he can loosely define doing so as part of his mission to “save” the country.
“The Trump administration is daring the courts in the United States to do something about this, and thus far, I don’t think most people in America understand that what’s at risk is the fundamental basis that there is fairness and justice and rule of law in the United States"
"...we should all agree that running the government based on the rule of law is a requirement. The playbook that is being used in the U.S. is not new; we’ve seen it in country after country where there’s been an increase in authoritarianism. To see it in the modern United States itself is what’s new and disturbing.”
It is instead reminiscent of the corruption and subversion of legal systems typical in authoritarian regimes. Political loyalty and the cult of personality, not competence or ethics, now govern hiring, firing, and disciplining of lawyers.
“Together, these efforts threaten effective law enforcement, undermine public confidence in the rule of law, and foster networks of corruption and lawlessness that ultimately make our communities less safe. Under President Trump, the DOJ has become an agency charged with ensuring that the President’s most loyal supporters can break the law with impunity.”
“He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation"
Hours later, she was sitting in an unrelated meeting when she got a frantic call from a member of her staff, saying she had to come back to her office right away.
When she got there, two building security officers were waiting to hand her a letter from Mr. Blanche firing her. They watched as she packed up some of her belongings into boxes and escorted her out of the building.
"experienced professionals throughout the Department are afraid to voice their opinions because dissent is being punished. Decisions are being made based on relationships and loyalty, not based on facts or expertise or sound analysis, which is very alarming given that what is at stake is our public safety. This is dangerous. This isn’t political - this is a safety issue.”
Khalil and his wife – who is eight months pregnant – had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents pushed inside behind them. The agents allegedly did not identify themselves at first, instead asking for Khalil’s identity before detaining him.
The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil’s student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil’s wife went to their apartment to get the green card.
“He has a green card,” an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had “revoked that too.”
Meanwhile, Khalil had been on the phone with his attorney, Amy Greer, who was trying to intervene, asking why he was being detained, if they had a warrant, and explaining that Khalil was a green card holder. The attorney had circled back to demanding to see a warrant when the agents apparently instead hung up the phone.
This is fundamentally about the application of First Amendment principles to political disagreement—regardless of the content of that disagreement.
The First Amendment exists precisely to protect speech that authorities might find objectionable. It was not designed to protect popular speech, which needs no protection.
Washington’s attorney general asked a federal judge Thursday to hold the Trump administration in contempt...
In the motion filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, the state says the National Institutes of Health revoked the grant despite a court order...
A second letter on Tuesday said the agency was stripping Seattle Children’s of more than $200,000, potentially forcing the hospital to pay back grant money already spent.
McGinty says the Seattle Children’s grant is one of hundreds similarly defunded.
Two of the prosecutors -- Andrew Rohrbach and Celia Cohen -- worked on the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Rohrbach also worked on the successful prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, former crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried and lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men's facilities under Donald Trump's executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president's policy
A federal judge ruled Trump violated federal law last month in dismissing the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which safeguards employees’ rights to organize unions and prevents unfair labor practices.
“An American President is not a king — not even an ‘elected’ one — and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here,” Howell wrote.
“The President’s interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power— or, more aptly, his aspiration—is flat wrong,” the judge added.
“The Executive has not pointed to any constitutional or statutory authority that would allow them to impose this type of categorical freeze,” the judge noted.
Martin’s refusal to sign off on an arrest warrant for hardcore MAGA Florida Rep. Cory Mills manages to be both breathtakingly corrupt and downright disgusting, a scandal that would’ve dominated news cycles during any previous administration.
Last month, the Metropolitan DC Police responded to a call at Mills’s residence. A 27-year-old woman who is not Mills’s wife, Sarah Raviani, reported that the congressman had “grabbed her, shoved her, and pushed her out of the door” and showed the officers fresh bruises. She also let the police officers hear a recorded call between her and Mills where he instructed her to lie about how she got the bruises. Eventually, when Mills talked to the police, he admitted that “the situation escalated from verbal to physical, but it was severe enough to create bruising.”
"This is a wildly dangerous sign — the idea that there are only five SCOTUS votes for paying congressionally mandated invoices for work already done!? This should be as basic a test of Article I as you can get. And that does not bode well for decisions to come." Garrett M. Graff (vermontgmg.bsky.social)
Second-term Trump has opened his administration with a round of actions likely to prove drastically unpopular: tariffs that raise prices; budget cuts that will reduce services for veterans, at national parks, for anyone who depends on weather services. Prices are rising, measles is spreading, airplanes are falling out of the sky. His effective co-president and chief policy maker, Elon Musk, is widely distrusted and disliked.
He talks of the Democrats as remorseless enemies. At the same time, he is making political choices that would normally seem certain to deliver those enemies a big majority in the House after the midterms.
Had Trump lost the 2024 election, he would right now be facing sentencing for his criminal convictions in the state of New York. He would be facing criminal and civil trials in other states. He was rescued from legal troubles by political success. Now Trump’s acting in ways that seem certain to throw power away in the next round of elections—if those elections proceed as usual.
Trump is keenly alert to his legal danger, deeply committed to keeping power by any means necessary. He also seems to be sleepwalking toward a stinging political loss that will expose him to all kinds of personal risk. He’s not trying to expand his coalition, to win any votes he does not already have. So what is his plan to preserve his immunity and his impunity?
the chief justice and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court helped rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment, completely gutting the ban on insurrectionists holding office in order to allow Trump to run for president again following his attempt to seize power by force after the 2020 election. Then Roberts and the other conservative justices manifested an absurd, imperial grant of presidential immunity, with no textual basis in the Constitution, to shield Trump from criminal prosecution, and in so doing set the stage for a despotic second term during which Trump will try to ignore court efforts to impose limits on his power.
the Trump administration is publicly, though not yet in court, claiming the right to usurp Congress’s constitutional authority over spending, which, if sustained, would bring the country closer to dictatorship
Perhaps he and his minions have not read Shakespeare recently, but they intuited the role of a Shakespearean villain, nevertheless.
In Shakespeare’s Henry VI: Part 2, Dick the Butcher says to his compatriots, “The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
The context in which Dick speaks makes clear that Shakespeare, at least, thought that lawyers were a bulwark against evil and that the rule of law was essential to a just and fair society. Dick and his co-conspirator Jack Cade—anti-intellectuals who wanted to burn all the books and kill anyone who could read—were leading a rebellion. They wanted to create an ignorant population, unaware of its rights and easily led.
And so, in the context of the play, Dick’s admonition to kill the lawyers is a plan to eliminate the protectiveness of the law, by removing those who guard it and enforce its protections. Or, as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said in a 1985 decision: “As a careful reading of that text will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”
Grasping the scale of President Donald Trump’s assault on American governance is no small matter. The administration is challenging laws, claiming the right to reinterpret the Constitution, questioning judges’ powers, and arrogating new powers to itself.
The better alternative is to describe exactly what’s happening: The president is taking actions he doesn’t have the power to take, disrespecting the rule of law, and attempting to revoke long-established rights. He is portraying himself as a king. Soon, he may openly defy an order from a duly appointed and confirmed federal judge. That would be a step closer to the end of American democracy than anything since January 6. Call that a catastrophe, call it lawlessness, call it a threat—just don’t call it a constitutional crisis.
So many of Mr. Trump’s actions have defied apparent legal limits that some scholars say the country is approaching a constitutional crisis.
Here are 38 of the Trump administration’s biggest moves so far. (Feb 20)
Donald Trump has been back in office for less than one month, and he, Elon Musk, and his senior administration officials have already plunged the nation into an ongoing constitutional crisis and openly performed various brazen acts of lawlessness and gleeful corruption, while threatening to “look at” judges who object to his onslaught against the U.S. Constitution and legal limits on his power.
Trump’s statement bears obvious resemblance to disgraced President Richard Nixon’s infamous line about how “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Like Nixon, Trump has now explicitly stated that he believes he is simply above the law, as any Mad King or debauched emperor should be.
And though it may be objectively shocking that a modern American president would repeatedly admit to this, without fear of significant pushback, on a random Saturday, it is regrettably unsurprising for this particular president.
The Week in Musk: "This is our shot"
Trump and Musk are ignoring the constitutional role of Congress to draft laws and authorize spending.
Many of the actions they have taken thus far appear to be illegal, according to a lengthy Washington Post report. The article covers how DOGE may have violated laws by offering federal employees buyouts; accessing the Department of Education’s federal student loan data; using personal emails to communicate with staffers at the General Services Administration; and ignoring the due process rights of federal employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), among other potential illegalities.
Trump hasn’t even been back in the White House for two weeks yet, and he and his lieutenants are in the middle of a wide-ranging blitz on his enemies and on the federal bureaucracy, featuring multiple “blatantly illegal” or wildly unconstitutional personnel and policy moves.
Now that he is back in power, the Trump administration appears to be operating based on one specific legal principle, towering above all others. “What are you gonna do about it?”
... updating and going back as time permits ...