Not Tired of Winning Against Trump

Judges hand Trump loss after loss...after loss

The pace of MAGA bullies’ outrageous, unconstitutional, and downright cruel shenanigans has accelerated. Last week, Donald Trump and his MAGA thugs pressured Skadden Arps law firm and Columbia University into submission; tried to strip bargaining rights away from hundreds of thousands of federal workers; ordered JD Vance (presumably after he got back from his uninvited, unwelcome visit to Greenland) to go “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo (did anyone ask the woke lions or giraffes how they felt?!); snatch more legal visa holders off the street; and dispatch the secretary of Homeland Security to pose in an abhorrent, disgusting fashion in front of prisoners (who were deported without due process and many of whom may not be guilty of a thing) being held in a foreign dungeon.

That barrage can feel overwhelming. It is overwhelming. It’s shameful. But we must not let the graceless, inhumane antics of Trump and his overlord Elon Musk dominate an encouraging reality: in court, they are losing far more than they are winning.

In just the last week, law firms prevailed against the “Justice” Department lawyers in cases before Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granting Jenner & Block a TRO to stop Trump’s retaliatory executive decree; and also before Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who granted WilmerHale its own, more limited TRO.

Meanwhile, Judge J. Paul Oetken of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a TRO to halt the “arbitrary and capricious” dismantling of Voice of America, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the dissolution of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Judge wrote:

These actions were taken in complete disregard for the decision Congress made 15 years ago, which was spurred by the devastating financial crisis of 2008 and embodied in the United States Code, that the agency must exist and that it must perform specific functions to protect the borrowing public.”

On the immigration front, Judge James Boasberg in the District Court for D.C. refused to lift his order banning the government’s deportation of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act. (In an entirely separate matter, he also ordered the Trump users in Signal-gate to preserve their correspondence.) In another case, Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts issued an order stopping deportations that fail to give those targeted a “meaningful” opportunity to seek protection under the Convention Against Torture. And again, in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, Judge Denise Casper ruled that the Turkish student at Tufts who was grabbed off the street could not be deported until the court rules on whether her abduction was legal.

Out in Wisconsin, Musk, who has been trying to buy a state Supreme Court seat, was forced to retreat in the face of outrage and legal action over his offer to issue “ two $1 million checks to people who had already voted in the election ‘in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.’” Previously, a complaint was launched for an investigation by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission against a Musk-backed group, Building America’s Future, for failing to reveal the real entity behind misleading ads aimed to paint Susan Crawford as ideologically extreme.

Let’s be clear, friends: That is a LOT of losing for Trump. And these are only a fraction of the losses Trump has suffered on a slew of grossly unconstitutional decrees (e.g. birthright citizenship or throwing trans service members out of the military). Trump’s response is not to stop violating the law but rather to announce ever more blatantly illegal decrees each day, apparently hoping voters (including his supporters) will not notice that the losses are mounting while chunks of his promised agenda remain stalled. His other response is to use his minions to attack the courts.

Judges nominated by presidents of both parties are not only routinely putting a halt to Trump’s unconstitutional capers but are calling out his lawyers’ contemptuous assertion that the government, not the courts, get to decide what is legal and what is not.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at a recent public appearance declared that judges should be “fearlessly independent.” We all must understand, she said, “that our obligation is to protect the rights given to us under the Constitution.”

Trump’s attacks on the courts seem to be misfiring with conservative judges as well. Jurists from Chief Justice John Roberts on down have blasted the president in name only’s desperate attempt to intimidate federal court judges. Even Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor of the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, a MAGA fan favorite, “threw his support behind Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ statement last week rebuking Trump for calling for a judge’s impeachment.” Pryor, perhaps nixing his chances for a Supreme Court nod from the notoriously vengeful Trump, said, “We have a remedy for correcting decisions that we may think are wrong. But that process is not impeachment, it’s an appeal."

Unlike Roberts, who remained silent on the identity of the impeachment-threatening figure, Pryor pointed his finger directly at Trump. “[T]here have been calls of this kind from leaders of both political parties in recent years, but it is a little more unusual perhaps when the president, who has the executive power, says something,” he said.

Trump will not lose every case, but he is losing enough to rattle him, provoke more outbursts, send him running to release more frivolous decrees, and reassure pro-democracy forces that he is stoppable—both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Moreover, given Trump’s lousy record in court, we suggest that law firms, universities, media outlets, and other trembling entities think twice before “obeying in advance”; they might try defending themselves (and democracy) instead.