Breaking The Law Breaking The Law!

Normally, we'd write about these individually. Have a speed round instead!

Damn, this week has been a long month.

In the midst of the Ukrainium One shitstorm, it can be easy to lose track of all of the other things going on. A bunch of states are suing Trump. Trump is suing a bunch of states. A whole bunch of other people are suing over a whole bunch of other terrible things. So totally normal politics and very stable geniuses with a dash of late-stage syphilis and a heaping teaspoon of PCP. #2019.

So anyway, here are all of the other places where Trump is fighting with states, civil rights organizations, and other assorted people trying to bring some goodness and light into the world.

Trump Tax Returns:  Trump v. Vance 

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance wants Trump's tax returns . Trump asked a federal judge to say he can commit as many crimes as he wants. Everyone is arguing about whether a sitting president can be criminally investigated or indicted.

Vance's subpoena to Trump accountant Mazars is on hold while Judge Victor Marrero considers Trump's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. Vance has filed a motion to dismiss, arguing this case is about a state grand jury proceeding and belongs in state court. Meanwhile, the DOJ is trying to decide whether it wants to get involved. It says it will have an answer on that by October 1.

Vance sent a letter to the court indicating the parties had reached a "temporary agreement." Mazars doesn't have to produce the documents requested by the subpoena until either two days after Judge Marrero rules or Monday, October 7, whichever is sooner.

Whatever Judge Marrero decides will inevitably be immediately appealed to the Second Circuit by the losing party. The losing party of the Second Circuit will probably ask SCOTUS to step in. SCOTUS will toss Trump's salad. Repeat.

Trump Tax Returns:  Trump v. California 

California enacted a well-meaning but probably unconstitutional law requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to get onto the ballot. Because something truly terrible must lurk within the pages of Donald Trump's tax returns, he immediately sued. Last week, a federal court enjoined the law since, like we said, it's probably unconstitutional.

Endangered Species Act:  California v. Bernhardt 

California is leading a coalition of 18 state attorneys general and New York City suing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to try to stop the Trump regime from gutting the Endangered Species Act. The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges the administration is ignoring science and the needs of endangered species in order to boost corporate profits.

At a press conference, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his "suspicion is that the Trump administration has misread the Endangered Species Act [...] they've chosen to prioritize endangering endangered species, rather than protecting those species."

This is the 61st lawsuit California has filed against Trump since he took office. Well done, Golden State!

Courthouse Arrests:  New York v. ICE 

If there's a state on par with California, as far as pissing off Trump goes, it has to be New York. Trump was already battling his home state on several fronts prior to this week, and now he can add another one to the list.

New York is suing the Nazis over at ICE for its practice of arresting undocumented immigrants at courthouses. The Legal Aid Society, representing a victim of domestic abuse who is afraid to go to court because of ICE, filed a separate suit challenging the practice.

Courthouse arrests in New York went up 1700% between 2016 and 2018.

When immigrants are arrested in courthouses, they're less likely to come forward as victims of crimes, even when their safety is in danger. Witnesses to crimes don't want to come to court to testify, for fear they'll be deported.

The plaintiffs argue that ICE's policy of arresting people in courthouses makes everyone less safe and puts immigrant communities at risk. The ICE Nazis will inevitably argue that they have an Article II that says they can do whatever they want. Or something.

These cases were just filed, so we may not see any major action here for a while. To be continued ...

Everything else in law world

In addition to the never-ending deluge of Trump cases, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on in the legal world that we would normally be writing about. So here's a summary of just some of the other crazy and terrible shit going on right now.

Honduras Asylum Deportation Case. The Supreme Court gave Trump and his army of deportation Nazis the green light to go ahead and deny everyone asylum two weeks ago, and the deportation Nazis were ready to go. Lawyers for the ACLU and National Immigrant Justice Center pleaded with US District Judge Timothy Kelly , a Trump-appointed judge, not to send their clients back to Honduras to die.

Sutherland Springs Shooting Litigation.Judge Xavier Rodriguez is really fucking pissed off at the DOJ lawyers in this case. They were supposed to name some names and instead just decided not to. Judge Rodriguez stormed out of court , sanctioned the lawyers, made the DOJ pay all of the plaintiffs' attorneys fees, and ordered the DOJ to submit the names by the end of the day Friday.

Once again, no charges for cops who do shitty things.Salvador Sanchez, an off-duty LAPD officer, murdered an intellectually disabled man in a Costco in June. We, as a society, have apparently decided that we don't particularly care when cops murder people, so Sanchez will face no criminal charges .

Senate Republicans pass on judge who followed the Constitution once.Back in July, we told you about how Trump Fifth Circuit nominee Sul Ozerden's confirmation was at risk because he accidentally followed the Constitution one time . Now, Ozerden has officially lost Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. This means Ozerden will have to pick up some Democratic support if he's going to make it through judiciary. (If Joe Manchin were on judiciary, his head would be imploding right about now.)

America's nightmare drunk racist uncle is dodging subpoenas.Everyone's least favorite alcoholic white nationalist, Steve Bannon, is apparently dodging federal subpoenas now. On Wednesday, the FTC unsuccessfully tried to serve Steve Bannon with a subpoena over his role in the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data scandal. According to Politico , the FTC is investigating whether Bannon "engaged in 'deceptive or unfair' use of data gleaned from Facebook."

ICE hates goodness and the Fourth Amendment.The SPLC is suing the US government over ICE once again ignoring that the Fourth Amendment is a thing that exists.

Bowe Bergdahl dishonorably discharged. A military judge dishonorably discharged Bergdahl for his actions when he left his military base in Afghanistan in 2009. In line with recommendations from high-ranking military officials, the judge declined to order prison time.

The Ninth Circuit looks ready to let a climate case filed by kids continue.On Monday, the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in a lawsuit youth activists have filed against the US government, alleging the United States government, the president, and several high-ranking executive officials have denied them their constitutional rights to life, liberty or property without due process of law by destroying the earth. The judges presiding seemed ready to let the case continue.

Badass Greta Thunberg and 15 other badass youth activists are suing 5 countriesover the climate crisis.They presented the complaint to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in New York on Monday.

And a whole bunch of crazy shit is happening in the UK. We only understand about half of it, but the gist is that the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament was illegal. As per usual, Boris Johnson responded with a whole bunch of verbal diarrhea. But, we guess, at least Mama England is as fucked up as we are right now?

So ... yeah

Who the fuck even knows anymore? We have officially made it to Friday, so that's cool. But Frigg only knows what's going to happen in the next few hours. The criminals over at the White House love to announce truly terrible things at the end of the day on Friday.

Godspeed, dear readers. May we all one day be able to look back on this time as those weird-ass fucking years when it seemed like everyone was on the same collective, terrible acid trip.

And hey, at least twitter is lit.

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