The Democracy Index

April 25, 2025

If you feel like this was a particularly chaotic news week, you are not alone. Here at The Democracy Index, we began the week wondering whether Trump can dissolve our democratic government faster than the courts can stop him.

As we noted in last Friday’s Index, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denounced the Trump Administration’s actions with respect to the Abrego Garcia case, involving the Maryland father mistakenly sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. In his order, Judge Wilkinson went out of his way to use language that should ring as a clarion call for judges throughout the United States, from local county and federal district courts up to the highest court in the land.

Judge Wilkinson wrote, “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.” He continued: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” (It’s worth noting that Judge Wilkinson is a conservative stalwart jurist and Reagan appointee.)

Despite Judge Wilkinson’s admonishment, the Trump administration was not deterred. In fact, the DOJ’s increasingly stubborn opposition to plaintiffs’ requests for discovery in the Abrego Garcia case drew palpable fury this week from Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee, who called the government’s actions “willful and bad faith.”

Pushing boundaries has not been limited to the Abrego Garcia case.

The government also continues its push to deport immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a statute that gives the president emergency powers in response to a foreign invasion. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that no one could be removed under that law unless they were given a “reasonable amount of time” to contest their removal and the opportunity to argue their challenge in court. The government is now giving targeted immigrants a mere 12 hours in some cases to indicate whether they will contest their deportation—raising serious questions about whether that is sufficient time for individuals to assert their constitutional rights. The government’s offer of truncated notice came after the Supreme Court last weekend had actually halted further deportations of Venezuelans from Texas.

As if disdain for the Constitution and the judiciary weren’t enough, the administration continues to insult American voters, including Trump supporters.

As our friend Norm Ornstein likes to remind us, the Trump kakistocracy—government by the least competent—continues to harm everyday Americans and put our allies at risk. On that front, the dishonorable prize again goes to Pete Hegseth, with reports revealing he shared sensitive national security information in yet another Signal chat on his personal phone—forwarding information about attacks in Yemen last month to his wife and brother, among others who should not have been privy to such sensitive details.

Equally troubling is Trump’s meme coin corruption, his latest crypto scheme to line his pockets. Upon learning that the top buyers of Trump‘s meme coin have now been invited to a private dinner with Trump at one of his golf clubs, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut called it: “The most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done. Not close.” Because it means that if someone puts enough money in Trump’s pockets, they could have the opportunity to inveigle him personally.

There’s also the corruption of the media. This week saw one of the most concerning developments for the press of recent vintage. Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, resigned, saying he had lost the editorial independence and reputation for integrity that the vaunted news program had enjoyed throughout its history. If Trump and his minions can intimidate those who report on them, Americans are deprived of vital information to hold their government accountable.

Through all of this, we must remind ourselves, as Joyce Vance does, that American presidents don’t offer themselves up for dinner to the highest bidders, as Trump has done to make money off of his meme coin. They don’t make paper-thin excuses for violating court orders, as this administration is doing in multiple deportation cases. We cannot let any of it become normal, not even for a second.

Despite these many challenges, there have also been multiple important victories for democracy this week.

For starters, the President backed away, at least temporarily, from some of his self-inflicted economic errors. On Tuesday, Trump walked back his Truth Social rhetoric about Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination” and now claims he never intended to fire Powell; he just wanted to see him be “more active.” Between Trump’s blinking on the trade war his tariffs caused and the Powell reversal, his economic strategies certainly don’t look like winners—and the pressure he is feeling may be resonating. Unfortunately, these unsound policies continue to shake the foundations of our economy.

As the week carried on, we saw several major court rulings against the administration, from a bipartisan spectrum of jurists.

• Judge William Orlick III, an Obama-appointee, enjoined the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” cities, ruling that sections of two Trump executive orders were unconstitutional.

• A trio of federal judges, including a Trump-appointee, issued rulings preventing the Trump administration’s interference in education and civil rights laws, which targeted anything the Administration believed was DEI and threatened educational institutions with prosecution or the loss of federal funding for DEI programs or teaching lessons that reference race and racism. Beyond these decisions, Harvard is leading the charge to fight back as well, suing the Trump Administration for its threats to cut federal funding unless it met outrageous demands.

• D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton-appointee, prevented the government from implementing a crucial part of a Trump executive order that attacked voting rights, ruling that the Constitution entrusts Congress and the states – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections.
  

• A Trump-appointed federal judge in Maryland, Stephanie Gallagher, ordered the Trump Administration to work to secure the return of yet another migrant who had been removed to El Salvador.

• D.C. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan-appointee, flayed the Administration’s unlawful shutdown of Voice of America, while granting a preliminary injunction to restore Voice of America and its employees, noting, “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.”

The courts, for now, are doing their job.