Donald's Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day In Court. In All The Courts.
Yes, all of them Katie!
Donald Trump had a really bad case of the Mondays yesterday, even though it was Tuesday. In separate cases, judges blocked Trump’s attempt to force transgender service members out of the military; ordered a reversal of Trump’s destruction of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), because its shutdown was almost certainly unconstitutional; blocked Trump’s EPA from “clawing back” climate program grants approved by the Biden administration; and ordered the Justice Department to provide detailed information on deportation flights it carried out in defiance of the judge’s order to stop them. (As punishment, Trump will be ordered to diagram the preceding sentence.) Also, regarding that fourth case, Chief Justice John Roberts had to remind Trump that if you dislike a federal court’s ruling, the proper thing to do is appeal it, not try to impeach the judge. You shithead, Roberts did not add.
Oh, but those two astronauts who’ve been waiting to return from the International Space Station since their Boeing space capsule was found to have been made by Boeing returned on schedule yesterday in a SpaceX capsule, so all the creeps on Twitter were congratulating Trump, though usually in second place after his boss, Elon Musk. Maybe that helped Trump’s feelings. At least Trump could sob to his other boss, pal, and fascism mentor, Vlad Putin, for two hours. He may have sought advice on how to lure judges to stand near windows above the sixth floor.
Animus? You’re Soaking In It!
In DC District Court, a federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order ordering that all transgender persons be kicked out of the military, finding that the order was likely unconstitutional because it violated the servicemembers’ rights. Judge Ana Reyes found the order violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, by discriminating based on sex and servicemembers’ transgender status. (Yes, that 2020 Supreme Court ruling remains in place.)
In a ruling that illustrates why we have the clichés “blistering” and “scathing” for court opinions (and hey, it’s a good read!), Reyes said the policy was “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” and then some:
Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact. Thus, even if the Court analyzed the Military Ban under rational basis review, it would fail.
Reyes’s ruling wasn’t especially surprising, given the clownassed performance of administration lawyers in last month’s hearing on the trans ban. The opinion refers to that hearing and to the order’s insulting language about transgender people again and again to make the case that hateful ideology, not any valid military purpose, is behind banning trans people who want to serve.
Noting that the Defense had said “animus” on the part of Trump and Secretary of Inebriation Pete Hegseth couldn’t be determined because it’s “subjective,” Reyes said,
True, the Court cannot read minds. But it can read. EO14183 and the Hegseth Policy tag transgender persons as weak, dishonorable, undisciplined, boastful, selfish liars who are mentally and physically unfit to serve. Its accompanying Fact Sheet piles on, further calling transgender persons insane, not resilient, unhealthy, and unfit. Hardly subtle.
Reyes also pointed out that for all those terrible traits that all trans people supposedly had, the government hadn’t provided a single bit of evidence, analysis, or data to back them up, and that in fact, “Defense counsel concedes that these assertions are pure conjecture.”
Even in the face of all that hatred, Reyes wrote, “The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them.”
To give the administration time to file for a stay while the full case is argued, Reyes delayed her order from going into effect until Friday.
Trump, Musk Ordered To Restore USAID, Be Its Butlers
In another epic opinion Tuesday, US District Court Judge Theodore Chuang ripped Elon Musk and his Artless DOGErs for their haphazard but near-complete dismantling of USAID, ruling that they had likely violated the Constitution, and not just a little bit, writing that
[The] Court finds that Defendants' actions taken to shut down USAID on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAID headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAID Officer, likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public's elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress.
Yeah, that’s just about everything Musk and the freaks did, all of it illegal.
Chuang also rejected the government’s assertions that actually, you see, Musk was but a simple adviser with no real power, so USAID actually tore itself apart on his advice. Instead, he found that Musk was very much in charge of the operation to dismantle USAID despite lacking any legal authority. That’s a violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause, making the whole mess illegal.
The lawsuit was brought by 26 USAID workers who remain anonymous, although we’re sure Musk and his buds are doing all they can to out them so they can get death threats and have their homes SWATted.
Chuang ordered DOGE to stop playing Minecraft for five minutes and “reinstate access to email, payments, security notifications, and other electronic systems, including restoring deleted emails, for current USAID employees,” and to let them back into their offices. He also blocked the government from further efforts to dismantle the agency while the case moves through the courts.
However, as NPR points out, all the agency’s contracts and programs have also been terminated, and as long as the case is being argued, it’s not clear how much of its actual mission of providing foreign aid (as allocated by Congress) can be restored.
Jeremy Konyndyk — president of Refugees International, who oversaw USAID's response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak— told NPR he found the judge's remedy “a little disappointing.”
“The narrow relief that it grants would not be related to USAID's [contracting] partners and funding recipients, it's really specific to the workforce,” Konyndyk said.
But it’s a good first step to at least begin the difficult process of fixing at least some of what Musk and his gang of idiots broke.
Hey, Lee Zeldin: You Can’t Just Yell ‘Fraud’ And Seize Grant Money
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan also slapped down the Trump administration yesterday, ruling that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hadn’t offered any kind of evidence to support his bizarre accusations that a Biden climate program had done anything improper. Zeldin has been trying to claw back $20 billion in grants awarded in 2024 under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, because he believed a stupid Project Veritas video proved there was something nasty in the climate shed.
Zeldin, acting on zero evidence, initially froze the funds in a Citibank account where they were waiting to be paid to several nonprofits that would fund loans for climate resilience and clean energy projects. Then he cancelled the grants altogether, claiming, again without evidence, that the
“termination is based on substantial concerns regarding program integrity, objections to the award process, programmatic fraud, waste and abuse and misalignment with the agency's priorities, which collectively undermine the fundamental goals and statutory objectives of the awards.”
Three of the nonprofits sued because they have been unable to cover basic operational costs without the grants, which were legally awarded. They argue that breaching the contracts — for $14 billion of the $20 billion total — had been a breach of contract, and Chutkan ruled yesterday that hell yes, that contract was breached all to hell and back, and you can’t just go and cancel stuff you don’t like because it’s “climate” or even because “Biden.”
“In the termination letters, EPA Defendants vaguely reference 'multiple ongoing investigations' into 'programmatic waste, fraud, and abuse and conflicts of interest' but offer no specific information about such investigations, factual support for the decision, or an individualized explanation for each Plaintiff,” Chutkan wrote.
Chutkan also pointed out that, when asked at a March 12 hearing to provide some evidence of fraud, or that alleged investigation’s findings, the best the EPA’s attorney could come up with was that he had seen media reports. Chutkan also found that the grants had been awarded “pursuant to a statute authorized by Congress,” which still controls spending under the goddamn Constitution.
Chutkan noted that the grants were cancelled without any opportunity for the nonprofits to object or make their case to the EPA, and that the process raised “serious due process concerns.” Her ruling stopped short of ordering that the funds be released, since the case is still going forward, but she blocked the cancellation of the grants and ordered the funds stay with Citibank and not be seized by the EPA or handed to any oil company bagmen standing around outside the bank.
Zeldin responded to the order by going on Twitter and lying some more that the contracts were wasteful and corrupt and bad, because in a courtroom, he’d need to provide some evidence, or he’d be committing perjury. Needless to say, the rubes praised him for his courage, and at least one idiot yelled it was chemtrails all along.
How’s That Constitutional Crisis Going?
We also have more “legal wrangling” or “attempts to nullify the Constitution” — opinions vary! — in the DC District Court case growing out of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (secretly) last Friday, and the deportation of three planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador. Just to refresh your memory, the flights to El Salvador went ahead Saturday even after Judge James Boasberg ordered the 200-something men remain in the US, and since then, the Trump administration has argued that nuh-uh, federal courts have no jurisdiction in this case because national security, and the men are all members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and no, we don’t have to prove it.
Also, there’s the nontrivial detail that the 1798 law only applies when the US is at war with another nation, which Trump says doesn’t matter because these alleged bad guys “invaded” the US, so yeah that’s just like war. Not surprisingly, Boasberg didn’t buy that argument either, just as no US court has ever upheld the claim that illegal immigration constitutes an “invasion” under the Constitution.
That’s where we get into constitutional crisis territory. One of the basic rules of justice is that accused criminals have the right to know what they’re being accused of, and that without due process, they can’t simply be disappeared into a foreign prison, possibly forever. Refusing a federal judge’s order to habeas that freakin’ corpus, toot sweet, is about as constitutional crisis-y as it gets.
In a hearing yesterday, Justice Department lawyers continued to stonewall, insisting that they didn’t have to provide any information, because what he was asking would “disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations.”
One filing, from Robert Cerna, ICE’s acting field director for enforcement and removal operations, did provide some basics, explaining that two of the planes had departed before Boasberg’s written order Saturday, and that the third took off after the order, but only carried people who actually did have final removal orders, so they weren’t subject to Trump’s wartime declaration in this nonexistent war, OK?
Boasberg then told the government it could deliver its super sensitive information under seal by noon Eastern today, so the very secret secrets would stay secret. Instead, the Justice Department filed a very pissy motion to stay that order for another 24 hours so the government could prepare its legal arguments and to decide whether to invoke the “state secrets privilege” to avoid disclosing anything to the court, even in secret.
The DOJ cried so hard over the unspeakable burden of answering some fairly simple questions, claiming in its motion that
What began as a dispute between litigants over the President’s authority to protect the national security and manage the foreign relations of the United States pursuant to both a longstanding Congressional authorization and the President’s core constitutional authorities has devolved into a picayune dispute over the micromanagement of immaterial factfinding
The questions about the timing and other details of the flights “have no bearing on any legal issue at stake,” the DOJ claimed, also whining that the judiciary isn’t the boss of the executive branch anyway, and griped that the flight details Boasberg wants “are grave encroachments on core aspects of absolute and unreviewable Executive Branch authority relating to national security, foreign relations, and foreign policy.” And even if delivered under seal, just complying with the order could “undermine the Executive Branch’s ability to negotiate with foreign sovereigns in the future,” because then judges would embark on “micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions and potential public disclosure.”
Boasberg rolled his eyes, said “whatever, losers,” and granted the 24-hour delay, but his order made clear that the information he’s asking for is solely to “determine if the Government deliberately flouted its Orders issued on March 15, 2025, and, if so, what the consequences should be.” (I feel like every sentence of all these judges’ orders are followed by an implied but unvoiced “You dipshits. You absolute fucking tools.”)
Boasberg pointed out that if the government intends to invoke the state secrets privilege, it better demonstrate that it has a very fucking solid reason to, noting that the bar is pretty high, and that the privilege exists when “there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.”
He added that the government hasn’t even suggested that the flight information is even classified, let alone a state secret, which is an even higher level of sensitivity than just “classified.” Boasberg drily added that it “appears to be an uncommon occurrence for the disclosure of unclassified information to threaten state secrets.”
He also reminded the government of its
own extensive promotion of the particulars of the flights. For example, the Secretary of State has revealed many operational details of the flights, including the number of people involved in the flights, many of their identities, the facility to which they were brought, their manner of treatment, and the time window during which these events occurred. […] The Court is therefore unsure at this time how compliance with its Minute Order would jeopardize state secrets.
But sure, Boasberg suggested, if you think this information you’ve been posting on Twitter is too secret for a judge to see, go ahead and invoke that privilege. He did not add “And find out,” but again, implied.
The DOJ has until noon Thursday to file the information Boasberg has ordered, or to make its dubious secrecy claim.
John Roberts Reminds Trump We Use Our Words Not Our Impeaches
Tuesday morning, Trump offered his own social media hissy about how Judge Boasberg is a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama,” and what’s more, he never once got elected even once!!!! Also, immigration was why Trump won the election so that means he can do anything he wants, the voters said so. Trump closed the rant by declaring that
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
This didn’t sit too well with Chief Justice John Roberts, who issued a rare statement pointing out that when we have disagreements with judges, we should use our inside voices, or at least the appeals process. In a brief statement released by the Supreme Court, Roberts said,
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Which is all fine and well, but golly, it sure would have been nice if Roberts had gone just a teensy step further and added that not only should they color within the procedural lines, good little presidents also don’t defy federal court orders.
Roberts sure got his point across clearly, though. When asked about the message last night by Laura Ingraham, Trump replied, “Well, he didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.”
Message delivered, message received.
And after all that, it’s your OPEN THREAD.
[NBC News / Order in Talbot v. US / NPR / Order in J Does 1-26 v Musk / NBC News / DOJ Motion For Stay in JGG v Trump / Order in JGG v. Trump / CBS News / Atlantic]
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Harry says take a look at these spectacular whiskers, I am the Sam Elliot of cats!
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-101773134?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
>>WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. <<
Judging by 2024 election results, we not only want them in the country but also running the country.