Wingnut Judge Will Now Decide All Of Biden Administration's Gaza Policy
We're guessing the 'presidential immunity' ruling won't apply to a Democrat.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has yet to meet a nonsensical conservative lawsuit he will not entertain or invent a ridiculous standard if it pushes forward a Republican talking point. And his new one is no exception.
Now, as we understand it, after Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, the argument in this entire post is moot. But fuck it, let’s do it anyway and then explain why!
You have perhaps heard of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA was established by the United Nations in 1949 and has spent the past 75 years trying to help displaced Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon.
Something like above 90 percent of the group’s funding comes from the United States and other UN member states. You may even recall some of those states put a temporary hold on donations to UNRWA last fall, when Israel tried to claim the organization employed members of Hamas who had participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
It has been a right-wing canard for years that UNRWA secretly funds Palestinian terrorism, or some shit. So a couple of years even before Oct. 7, lecherous pill-head congressman Ronny Jackson sued the Biden administration over its UNRWA funding. The administration asked that the lawsuit be dismissed on the grounds that Jackson didn’t have standing to sue.
Unfortunately Jackson had sued in the court of Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Texas judge who has yet to meet a specious conservative argument he couldn’t get behind. Last Friday he issued his ruling granting Jackson standing on the basis that — and we’re not joking here — Jackson travels to Israel a lot.
Well, if that’s the standard, our rabbi should sue, she goes to Israel quite a bit. (Her mom lives there.) Shoot, the entire synagogue should sue because it regularly organizes Israel trips, as do literally thousands of other synagogues in the country.
Anyway, long excerpt because this shit is hilarious:
In 2018, the Trump administration terminated Economic Support Fund awards in the West Bank and Gaza and ceased contributions to the United Nations Relief Works Agency ("UNRWA"). ECF No. 43 at L Plaintiffs call this the "Trump Policy." Id. at 1-2,4, 16,28, 30. Then, according to Plaintiffs, "Defendants arbitrarily . . . and unlawfully changed the Trump Policy" on January 20,2021. Id. at 2. Pursuant to that change, Defendants "obligated or transferred more than $1.5 billion to Gaza and the West Bank through Economic Support Fund awards and United Nations Relief Works Agency contributions" between January 20,2021, and the date of Plaintiffs' amended complaint. Id. at3.
The named defendant in this lawsuit is Joe Biden. He is the president and has been since January 20, 2021, which Jackson might remember if he stopped popping benzos like Tic Tacs for five seconds. The congressman here is complaining that the elected president unlawfully changed a predecessor’s policy.
Just sit with how inane that it for a second. Imagine the possibilities.
Could someone have sued Ronald Reagan for ripping out the solar panels on the White House roof because importing oil from Saudi Arabia was bad for the environment? Could a Democratic congresswoman sue Donald Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris Accords because she’s about to lose the beach house where her family vacations to rising sea levels? The next time we drive to the Outer Banks, can we sue the state of North Carolina for having lax gun laws that make it less safe for us to go there?
These are the questions that haunt us.
Of course we started writing this before Monday’s insane Supreme Court ruling granting presidents immunity for official acts, no matter how illegal. So can DOJ lawyers now argue that even if Biden violated the Impoundment Act or whatever when he restored funding to UNRWA, it was an official act and Ronny Jackson and Matthew Kacsmaryk can go eat a bag of salted rat dicks if they don’t like it?
We’re not a lawyer, but we’ll assume the answer is “hell yes.” In fact, the Biden White House should lean into doing whatever it wants under the guise of official acts from now until the end of Biden’s term or he gets replaced by Tim Ryan or a banana or whatever Bill Maher thinks is appropriate.
It is now presidential policy that all citizens must donate to Wonkette.
This remains a Wonkette post about Israel and Gaza, and if you are dicks to each other, we will shut this shit down.
Oof, already have some bad news on the "people being dicks to each other" front. These last few days have brought out some snippiness in folks, I've noticed.
Well to be fair, nowhere in the ruling does it say Biden has immunity. In fact, the word Biden doesn’t appear anywhere in the majority opinion. So I don’t see how democrats can argue that he has immunity too.
By Jonathan Turley