Retired Supreme Court justice gripes about the hot mess he helped create

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is very concerned about what is happening with the courts, you guys. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why do you ask?

Kennedy’s remarks came during his Thursday speech at a forum titled “Global Risks to the Justice System—A Warning to America.” He was one of several speakers, including judges from countries where authoritarian crackdowns threatened the independence of the judiciary.

The bravery of those judges most definitely did not rub off on Kennedy, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In the face of repeated and ongoing attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump and his administration, the best Kennedy could do was praise judicial independence, as if that exists on the nation’s highest court any longer.

In this Oct. 8, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump watches as retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, ceremonially swears-in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, left, in the East Room of the White House. Kavanaugh's wife Ashley is second from right with daughters Margaret, left, and Liza.

“Judges decide issues which have political consequences, but they don’t decide in a political way,” Kennedy claimed. “We have to honor the fact that judicial independence does not mean judges are put on the bench so they can do as they like—they're put on the bench so they can do as they must.”

Come on, Tony. Your cute little deal with Donald Trump in 2018, where you personally lobbied him to choose your former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed you, was step two in Trump’s transformation of the court into a conservative grievance machine, following on the heels of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation the previous year.

You were perfectly aware that opposition to abortion was one of Trump’s litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees—he even campaigned on it. You were also perfectly aware that many of his lower court picks during his first term openly held anti-LGBTQ+ views. Trump explicitly chose judges because they would rule “as they like” instead of ruling “as they must.”

Indeed, when judges do rule as they must, and Donald Trump doesn’t like it, he attacks them personally. He called for Judge James A. Boasberg to be impeached after he blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants.

At least 11 judges have had their families threatened with violence after they ruled against the Trump administration. Many of the threats occurred over at Elon Musk’s Nazi bar, X, where Musk himself amplified some of them. High-profile Trump supporter Laura Loomer shared a photo of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, alleging that she was helping undocumented gang members and calling for Boasberg and his daughter to be arrested and his entire family to be deported. James Boasberg was born in California to U.S. citizens, so the deportation demand is equal parts chilling and weird.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour faced both a bomb threat and a swatting incident after he ruled Trump’s birthright citizenship order was unconstitutional. During his speech, Kennedy fretted that “Judges must have protection for themselves and their families. Our families are often included in threats” without ever acknowledging who is whipping up those threats.

Congressional Republicans have attacked judges on every front. They’ve called for the impeachment of judges who block Trump’s illegal actions. The Senate tried to get a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill restricting lower courts from issuing preliminary injunctions against the government unless the plaintiff posted a bond equal to whatever the government said were its costs and damages from not being able to do illegal things right away.

Whenever conservatives want to both-sides the threats to the judiciary, they have literally one example: At a 2020 rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer called out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Roberts immediately issued a statement quoting Schumer and saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

But when Trump relentlessly attacks the judiciary, including routinely defying court orders, and elected officials call for judges to be impeached, the best Roberts could come up with was, “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.”

This is equally as mealy-mouthed as Kennedy’s comments that the judiciary should stand for the rule of law and “we must always say no to tyranny and yes to truth.” Notably absent is any mention of who is attacking the rule of law. Notably absent is any mention that the rule of law went out the window when the conservative majority granted Trump immunity. Notably absent is any mention of who is saying yes to tyranny and no to truth.

Kennedy doesn’t deserve praise or a cookie for these vague statements. If he genuinely cared about attacks on the rule of law, he would need to challenge his former colleagues. He would need to challenge Trump, the man he cut a deal with to get Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment. He would need to say that the threats of violence against judges only occur when they rule against the administration. He would need to call out the ceaseless attempts by GOP elected officials to knee-cap the courts.

Kennedy is not going to do any of those things, but he’s probably going to continue to make a lot of high-minded speeches. Feel free to ignore him until he tells the truth.

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New report shows how Trump is breaking the law, and nope, he doesn’t care

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Lisa Needham

The Government Accountability Office just issued a giant detailed report about how the Trump administration illegally impounded billions of dollars by suspending approval of any new electric vehicle charging projects. Predictably, however, the administration does not care and responded by just shrugging it off.

You are probably wishing you lived in an era where you did not have to care about dense GAO reports, and you could trust that the government was just sort of humming along. But we all live in the Trump era, which means that government projects are subject to the whims of President Donald Trump or Elon Musk, which is why you’re now reading about the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program. Lucky!

Back in February, the Federal Highway Administration—which is part of the Department of Transportation and currently being wildly mishandled by former reality TV star Sean Duffy—issued a memo saying that the new leadership of DOT has “decided to review the policies underlying the implementation of the NEVI Formula Program.”

Trump shakes hands with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy

The memo rescinded the Biden-era guidance for NEVI and suspended approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans. The only thing that would continue is reimbursement to states that have already incurred costs—but only until the administration gets around to issuing new guidance.

So why is the administration holding back this money? According to the FHWA memo, it’s the now-familiar justification for most of the administration’s actions in gutting programs: guidance has to be “updated to align with current U.S. DOT policy and priorities.”

There’s just one problem with holding back this money: the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which says that the executive branch cannot withhold funds already allocated by Congress. But the administration has been flouting the ICA for months, beginning with Trump’s attempt to freeze all federal spending, despite those funds already being appropriated by Congress.

So what happened when the GAO report dropped? Well, Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, currently very busy implementing Project 2025, went on X to say the government was just going to ignore it. Oh, and also that the GAO “played a partisan role in the first-term impeachment hoax.”

The GAO is a boring thing, and that’s meant in the most complimentary way. It’s a congressional watchdog that examines government spending and provides Congress and agencies with “objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.” Huh. That sounds a lot like it was already doing the sort of thing that the made-up Department of Government Efficiency says it was doing.

The GAO has 39 other open impoundment-related investigations, but Vought preemptively shrugged those off as well, saying that the GAO would call everything an impoundment to “grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt” and that all investigations were “non-events with no consequence.”

While the administration is busy flat-out rejecting the oversight functions of the GAO, Republicans in Congress are busy flouting a different oversight body. Last week, when Senate Republicans voted to block California from setting its own emission standards, they did so by overriding the Senate parliamentarian. Like the GAO, the Senate parliamentarian is a nonpartisan body. It advises Congress on anything that requires interpretation of the rules of the Senate.

Both the GAO and the parliamentarian advised that the Congressional Review Act couldn’t be used to strip California of its emissions waivers because those waivers are not the same as agency rules. Paying that no mind, the GOP just overrode the parliamentarian.

It’s in no way clear what happens when Republicans just ignore oversight bodies. There seems to be no consequences for the administration upending checks and balances to grab as much power as possible for the executive branch.

Republicans in Congress seem to be on board with this, letting the administration impound funds with nary a peep. Ultimately, the stance of the GOP is that oversight is for suckers and that anyone who tells them they can’t do something should pound sand.

This isn’t governance; It’s defiance wrapped in pretending that refusing to spend duly allocated funds is actually a boon for taxpayers, saving them billions. We know those savings are a lie, but no one seems to have any idea how to stop the administration from doing whatever it wants.

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House GOP to probe important things—like Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Because they are absolute ghouls, House Republicans are opening an investigation into former President Joe Biden’s health, including demanding that his doctor testify about Biden’s private medical information. Meanwhile, current President Donald Trump is so flagrantly and consistently incoherent that the only way for his administration to deal with it is to ensure no transcripts of his rambling remarks are available.

This latest probe is technically more of a reopening. House Republicans investigated Biden’s alleged cognitive decline last year, but thanks to Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper making the rounds with their book about how Biden getting old is the biggest threat to American democracy, they’ve got an excuse to do it again. And of course, after Biden announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, the door was wide open for Rep. James Comer to continue his unhealthy vendetta against the Biden family.

Not that Comer really needs an excuse. The fever swamp that is his brain likely means that pretty much any time anyone even mentions the Biden name, he spins up the House Oversight Committee to “investigate” something, anything. After Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, Comer ran to Newsmax to say that meant it was time to open another investigation into Hunter’s laptop. That was after he spent 15 months fruitlessly trying to invent some corruption for which Biden could be impeached.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer

The one-two punch of Tapper’s media blitz and Biden’s cancer diagnosis must have been a dream come true for Comer, who dashed off letters to Biden’s doctors and former aides. He wants Biden’s doctor to prove that his “financial relationship with the Biden family” didn’t affect his assessment of Biden’s fitness to serve, while also basically saying that the doctor helped cover up Biden’s decline from the public. Inquiries to former aides are so that Comer can “understand who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch during the Biden Administration,” with the implication there being, of course, that it was not Joe Biden.

Hilariously, Comer is pretending that one of the reasons Biden’s physician has to share the former president’s private medical information is that the Oversight Committee needs that to “explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.”

Comer has no actual interest in fitness to serve. This is just him building on Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric saying the 25th Amendment should be “modified” to allow for the removal of a vice president because Kamala Harris was part of a conspiracy to cover up Biden’s decline. Any real query into the capacity of a president to do his job would have to grapple with not just Trump’s inability to do the job but also his obvious handoff of vast chunks of decision-making.

Trump routinely makes things up out of thin air, but that’s always been the case. That makes it difficult to tell whether he’s lost the plot or is just lying. When he showed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pictures from the Democratic Republic of Congo and insisted they were instead evidence of white genocide in South Africa, it’s just as likely that Trump knew the truth but didn’t care as it is that he genuinely didn’t have any idea what he was looking at.

But even if you set aside all the times in which Trump blatantly lies in service of a political point, you’ve still got all the other times where it seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told the press he didn’t sign the Alien Enemies Act proclamation that paved the way for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, despite his signature appearing on it.

And he routinely admits he doesn’t know about major decisions. Earlier this month, The Washington Post compiled the most recent ones. He said he didn’t know his nominee for surgeon general, but had listened to a recommendation from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He said he hadn’t been briefed on U.S. soldiers killed in Lithuania. He wasn’t aware the administration was considering deporting people to Libya. He’s not the person responsible for the failure to bring Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia home from a Salvadoran prison, because, “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

It’s a cliche to say that every accusation is a confession, but that’s pretty much what happens every time Republicans open their mouths.

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Supreme Court justices sure are quiet about attacks on their power

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Late last month, in his official capacity as presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, Chief Justice John Roberts got sued by America First.

That’s the legal group that Donald Trump’s senior adviser and chief ghoul Stephen Miller founded. America First typically keeps busy by suing everyone Miller finds insufficiently racist. This lawsuit, though, is wholly designed to do Trump’s bidding.

Yes, the lawsuit that would drastically shift power from the judiciary to Trump’s White House was basically engineered by someone who works in Trump’s White House.

You’re probably wondering why this hasn’t been splashed all over every news source, particularly since it was filed almost two weeks ago. It’s a direct challenge to the authority of the judicial branch, yet there’s been nary a peep until Talking Points Memo reported on it Friday. No official statements from the court, no missive from Roberts, no Justice Sam Alito penning a whiny op-ed. Just meek silence about an existential threat.

That meek silence might not seem so distressing if the justices were always close-mouthed about challenges to the judiciary, but that’s not the case. Roberts knows how to issue statements about threats to the judiciary’s independence because he does it routinely. Alito knows how to run to the Wall Street Journal when he wants to complain.

America First’s lawsuit is ostensibly about whether the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But what it’s really about is a demand that the White House be given control over an arcane, but crucial, part of the judiciary by declaring it part of the executive branch.

Without getting too deep into the brainworms of this theory, it goes something like this: The Judicial Conference is an agency, not a court, because it doesn’t issue decisions. Instead, it is a body that makes rules for the courts. It’s also a body that must respond to congressional oversight requests. The chief justice has the power to appoint people to committees, so, according to the lawsuit, he is “acting as an agency head.” Rinse and repeat for roughly the same argument about the Administrative Office.

You know where this is going, right? If it’s an agency, it’s part of the executive branch. If it’s part of the executive branch, it’s under the control of the president.

In theory, the lawsuit is only asking for this so that those entities would have to respond to America First’s FOIA requests, but the only way that can happen is by saying they’re part of the executive branch, because their current status as part of the judiciary makes them exempt from FOIA.

So, what power would the president gain if both were under his control? Well, the Judicial Conference manages administrative and policy issues for the federal courts.

That sounds fairly benign, but in that role, it handles complaints against federal judges and workplace harassment issues in the judiciary. It prepares plans on how to assign judges if necessary. It promulgates the regulations for financial disclosures and other ethics rules. Imagine a White House that could weaponize complaints against judges it hates while ignoring any ethical lapses by reliable favorite judges.

What about the Administrative Office? It’s what it sounds like. It provides all the administrative support for the judicial branch, including financial, technology, legislative, and program support services. It also develops the annual judiciary budget and carries out Judicial Conference policies.

Imagine a White House that completely controls how resources are distributed across federal courts or decides which program initiatives the courts can undertake. Imagine that White House slashing that funding to the bone or letting Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency run roughshod through confidential databases.

Shifting both of these over to the executive would have another effect, which is that it would undermine congressional oversight. Right now, those offices respond to oversight or investigation requests from members of Congress. In theory, those offices would still have that responsibility, but they’d be controlled by Trump toadies.

Conservatives like Trump and Miller are unhappy that Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had the temerity to inquire into undisclosed billionaire-funded freebies received by Alito and Clarence Thomas. Those inquiries came after the April 2023 ProPublica report that Thomas failed to disclose literally dozens of destination vacations, private jet flights, and more from his billionaire buddy, Harlan Crow. The report sparked Whitehouse’s 2023 request to the Judicial Conference that it refer Thomas to the attorney general for investigation.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the subject of extensive ProPublica reporting about his failure to disclose all of the gifts he’d received from rich benefactors.

So, a close adviser to the president is puppeteering a lawsuit that would strip the judiciary of the power to oversee its own affairs and would hobble its ability to work with Congress on meaningful oversight.

But the most vocal conservative justices do not see this blatant power grab as problematic. At least, that’s what we can deduce from the fact that they’ve said nothing, despite being perfectly happy to speak out on far lesser matters.

Remember when the chief justice was so concerned that Congress not exceed its authority over the judiciary that he refused to appear before the Senate in April 2023 to answer questions about court ethics after news broke about Thomas? About a month later, he touted the judiciary’s “status as an independent branch of government under the Constitution’s separation of powers” as a reason not to allow Congress to impose any code of conduct on the court.

So what exactly does have to happen to rouse Roberts to raise the alarm? Well, apparently, a milquetoast statement from a Democratic senator.

In March 2020, while making a speech outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer said of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Heavens! Roberts rushed to get a statement out that named Schumer, quoted him, and said that "threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

By contrast, look at the statement Roberts made after Trump went after Judge James A. Boasberg, the judge who blocked the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan immigrants.

“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED,” Trump declared on social media. He also called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”

And it wasn’t just Trump. Multiple elected GOP officials have introduced articles of impeachment against multiple federal judges. Trump supporters have threatened the families of at least 11 judges who have ruled against the administration.

Did Roberts call anyone out by name? Did Roberts quote Trump? Haha, of course not.

Here’s the whole of Roberts’ statement: “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.”

That’s telling ’em, John.

What about Alito? He’s someone who has not been shy about making public statements whenever he feels attacked. When Alito learned in June 2023 that ProPublica was publishing a story about his failure to disclose a fancy vacation paid for by billionaire Paul Singer and to recuse himself from cases related to Singer’s hedge fund, he had an op-ed over at the Wall Street Journal before the ProPublica piece even ran.

Justice Samuel Alito published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to attacks reporting about him.

One month later, he was back on the op-ed pages, the subject of a fawning interview co-authored by David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who had a tax case before the Supreme Court at the time of the interview. In refusing to recuse, Alito explained that Rivkin, when writing the articles, was magically “a journalist, not an advocate.” Sure.

Alito also took the opportunity to declare that Congress can’t regulate the Supreme Court, period, because there’s nothing in the Constitution that says so. It sounds like Alito is very concerned when the other branches try to intrude on the judiciary’s authority! Oh, wait, that only applies to Democrats in Congress. Apparently, when the executive branch makes a power grab, that’s just fine.

A few years ago, the America First case would have been the sort of lawsuit only brought by the weirdest pro se litigants who were convinced that Roberts was Illuminati or some such thing. The notion that the whole of the constitutional order should be upended, that the judiciary’s administrative functions secretly belong to the executive branch, would have been treated like the nonsense it was.

Now, though, this sort of nonsense is being pushed by one of the president’s closest advisers and just happens to track the president’s goal of eradicating the independence of the other branches of government. But still, from the Supreme Court? Silence.

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Clarence Thomas is big mad, and big law pays off the president

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Would you like some good news, even if it is only a temporary dopamine hit? Of course you would. Let yourself experience the sheer joy of seeing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals treat the Trump administration’s legal arguments with precisely what they deserve—scorn.

On Wednesday, the appellate court issued a decision denying the administration’s request to overturn Judge James Boasberg’s order that blocked the Trump team from deporting migrants without due process.

The ban is a mere two weeks long, briefly halting the practice of piling migrants into planes and sending them to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a cutesy media hit earlier this week. Donald Trump has justified this by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, previously used only in times of war.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem films her social media content in a brutal Salvadoran prison.

The administration found the idea of a two-week delay so outrageous, it made an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit, saying Boasberg infringed on the executive branch’s power regarding national security.

Things started going badly for the administration during oral argument when Judge Patricia Millett said that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”

Ouch.

Judge Karen Henderson, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote an opinion concurring with the decision to uphold the stay, rejecting the administration’s ridiculous argument that courts aren’t even allowed to review the government’s conduct because national security blah blah blah.

She also took the administration to task for using a random dictionary definition of “invasion” as its only support for the argument that we are somehow under attack by Venezuelan gangs, and therefore migrants can be deported.

Millett’s concurring opinion pointed out the absurdity of the administration saying it doesn’t have to comply with the temporary restraining order while simultaneously challenging the order.

“The one thing that is not tolerable,” Millett wrote, “is for the government to seek from this court a stay of an order that the government at the very same time is telling the district court is not an order with which compliance was ever required.”

The administration may take this to the Supreme Court, where Trump can see if the conservative majority will do him a solid, like they so often do, and let him keep deporting anyone he wants based on, well, nothing except the dictionary.

The judiciary rouses itself from slumber

The judicial branch finally seems to have realized that it is suboptimal for judges to be threatened with impeachment and defunding just because the president doesn’t like their rulings. There’s also the tiny problem of death threats.

It no doubt stings that the Trump administration has lost lower court battles over its unprecedented funding freeze, its mass firing of government workers, and its horrific deportations. No other administration, though, has reacted to losses in court by deciding to just rid the world of these meddlesome judges.

The judiciary has set up a task force about security and the independence of the courts. Federal judges and court clerks will make up the task force, which will help the judiciary “respond to current risks, and to anticipate new ones.”

There should be no risk to judges for ruling against Trump, and it’s appalling that it’s reached the point where a task force is needed. But here we are, and it’s good the judiciary eventually noticed.

Clarence Thomas is incandescent with rage that we can’t all have ghost guns like the founders intended

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an incredibly mild Biden-era rule about ghost guns. Ghost guns are sold as parts, not complete weapons, to be assembled by the buyer or another private party. They’re untraceable, have no serial numbers, and you don’t need a license to buy them.

A ghost gun that police seized from an organized shoplifting crime ring.

Regrettably, the regulation doesn’t ban ghost guns. All it requires is that ghost guns are treated like other firearms, requiring sellers to add serial numbers, verify buyers are at least 21, and perform background checks.

You will not be surprised to learn that Justice Clarence Thomas finds this an outrageous limitation on freedom. His dissent predictably whines about “government overreach” and contains what feels like eleventy-thousand words debating the meaning of words in the rule.

What he’s really mad about, though, is a worry that the ghost gun rule could be applied somehow to block home modification of AR-15s. God forbid.

Have you considered that the people who really need reparations in America are the Jan. 6 rioters?

When Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., isn’t protecting a GOP House member from domestic violence charges, investigating nonexistent voter fraud, or threatening law schools, he’s very busy calling for reparations for the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol.

Martin fixated on this well before Trump tapped him as the top prosecutor in D.C. Back in January 2024, he mused that he had “finally come around” to reparations and that J6 insurrectionists should get “a big pot of money, like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims.”

Yes, literal insurrectionists who received the benefit of full due process in the judicial system are precisely the same as people who got mesothelioma thanks to breathing cancer for decades. It’s also an odd comparison because asbestos victims are paid out from private compensation funds, not the government, though veterans who were exposed during their service can apply for disability compensation.

U.S. Capitol Police security video showed Tyler Bradley Dykes, marked in red, breaking into the Capitol. He had been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for assaulting police officers.

Now Trump has picked up the torch, saying he’s thinking about establishing a government compensation fund for the very criminals he pardoned. Trump is not, of course, down with reparations for the descendants of enslaved persons.

Guess we’ve finally found something the administration will spend money on. Too bad it’s this.

Two more law firms get their turn in the barrel for … reasons

It was only a week ago that the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP rolled over and showed their tummies to Trump to get him to rescind an executive order targeting the firm.

It was inevitable that capitulation would embolden Trump, who promptly issued new executive orders targeting additional firms he has beef with, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale. These executive orders generally suspend the security clearances of firm employees, block their access to federal buildings, and drastically restrict their ability to talk to government employees.

WilmerHale was targeted because Robert Mueller worked there before and after his role as special counsel investigating Russian interference in Trump’s first election. In the case of Jenner & Block, attorney Andrew Weissmann, former deputy to Mueller, previously worked there.

Never mind that Mueller retired from WilmerHale four years ago, and Weissmann hasn’t been at Jenner & Block since 2021 and is now a Substacker.

Both WilmerHale and Jenner & Block sued the administration on Friday. WilmerHale’s lawsuit points out that the executive order violates the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the right to counsel.

Jenner & Block’s complaint explains that the executive order threatens not only the firm, but the legal system itself and that the Constitution “forbids attempts by the government to punish citizens and lawyers” based on their choice of clients, their legal positions, and the people they associate with.”

Trump’s attack on law firms has had the desired effect, as firms are starting to refuse to represent his opponents.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that mega-firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had entered into talks with the Trump administration to stave off a similar executive order. By Friday afternoon, Skadden was reportedly agreeing to give $100 million in pro bono work to administration-approved causes, which Trump called “essentially a settlement.”

Now that’s some complying in advance.

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It’s now an impeachable offense to rule against the president

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Republicans are dying to impeach lower court judges who have ruled against the Trump administration, an unprecedented attack on the judiciary. Meanwhile, over at the judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts is utterly unable to meet the moment.

There’s a tiny problem with the Republican impeachment plan. Much like the president, federal judges can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” It’s right there in Article II of the Constitution. But Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, cares nothing for your silly constitution and wants to impeach Judge James Boasberg for the high crimes and misdemeanors of issuing a ruling the administration doesn’t like.

Gill is not a paragon of legislative accomplishment. Before coming to Congress this year, Gill was mostly known as an election denier and the son-in-law of fellow election denier Dinesh D’Souza. Gill has desperately tried to distinguish himself in the crowded field of GOP legislators willing to do unhinged things to get Trump’s attention. Hence, he introduced a bill that would remove Founding Father Benjamin Franklin from the $100 bill and replace it with President Donald Trump.

Too bad that Rep. Joe Wilson, famous for yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during the State of the Union, already introduced a measure to create a new $250 bill and slap Trump’s face on that.

Just as he was not the first legislator who suggested debasing U.S. currency, Gill also wasn’t the first House member to call for impeachment of a lower court judge. That honor goes to Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, who introduced articles of impeachment against Judge Paul Engelmayer nearly a month ago because Engelmayer blocked the Department of Government Efficiency teens from burrowing into Treasury Department records.

But Gill did win the race to demand Judge James Boasberg be removed from the bench because Boasberg blocked—or tried to block—the administration from summarily deporting over 200 Venezuelans who Trump alleged are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Boasberg’s order to stop those deportations was met with outright defiance by the administration, which did it anyway.

While Gill’s articles of impeachment say that Boasberg committed high crimes and misdemeanors, Gill’s appearance on Newsmax on Wednesday gave away the game. When asked what crime the judge committed that would fit under “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Gill came up with, “This is for usurping the executive’s authority.”

NEWSMAX: For impeachment you have to have "high crimes and misdemeanors." What crime did the judge commit? REP. BRANDON GILL: This is for usurping the executive's authority
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-19T15:46:46.502Z

Even if it were true, which is definitely not the case, it’s unclear how that would count as a high crime or misdemeanor for which impeachment is appropriate. First, intruding upon the executive's authority, however that might irritate Trump, is not actually a crime. The remedy for Boasberg exceeding the bounds of his authority is that the administration gets to appeal to a higher court and argue about it there.

By the time Gill drafted his impeachment articles, he had reworked his theory into a claim that Boasberg had “willfully use[d] his judicial position to advance political gain” and “attempted to seize power from the Executive Branch and interfere with the will of the American people.” Gill then said Boasberg had created a “created a constitutional crisis.”

The House has rarely impeached judges, but usually, it does so when a judge is convicted of an actual crime, made false statements, shown improper favoritism, was drunk on the bench, or abused the power to hold someone in contempt. None of that happened here.

All that happened is that Boasberg made a ruling in which he interpreted the Constitution and United States law to determine whether the administration should be temporarily blocked from deporting people. This was based on what can charitably be called a novel legal theory about the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president wide latitude to deport non-citizens during times of war.

Prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025.

Trump says he has the sole authority to designate non-state actors, like Venezuelan gangs, as enemy aliens who have invaded, and we are therefore at war. Then, he can deport any migrant who he believes falls in that category without any due process.

Judge Boasberg’s ruling, despite being spun by the right as massive overreach, was appropriately cautious. All Boasberg did was issue a 14-day temporary restraining order, freezing deportations for just two weeks while the parties continued to litigate. The notion such a minimal restriction on the administration’s actions constitutes a judicial overreach so outrageous is absurd.

While Gill is doing the president’s dirty work over in the House, Trump is whipping the MAGA faithful into howling for Boasberg’s removal. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is bribing, er, donating to GOP legislators who back impeachment, just to remind them who really runs the show.

All of this adds up to a pretty comprehensive assault on the integrity and authority of the judiciary. However, the man who has been head of the judiciary for nearly 20 years, Chief Justice John Roberts, could not muster even a few strong words about it. Here is the entirety of Roberts’ weak sauce statement:

"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."

This is a nothingburger. It doesn’t specify who is yelling for impeachment. It says nothing about how attacks on individual judges are beyond the pale. It doesn’t address the administration’s belief it is not bound by lower court orders.

But the news media always grades Roberts on a curve, eager to pretend he is evenhanded rather than a staunch partisan who invented complete immunity for Trump. So they are calling this statement so short that it could fit in a tweet, a “rebuke” of Trump and an “extraordinary display of conflict” between the two branches.

Trump certainly didn’t see it as a rebuke, gloating on Fox that, “Well, he didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.”

This is not the behavior of someone who is chastened, who intends to respect the federal courts, or who will stop calling for the impeachment of judges.

Roberts has a front-row seat to the administration’s destruction of the constitutional order. He has the unique power to call this out in a meaningful way. Whether he’s unable to do so because he’s feckless or because he has no problem with the administration’s approach doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s helping deepen the real constitutional crisis we’re facing.

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Trump’s win means less scrutiny for shady sugar daddy Elon Musk

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Lisa Needham

Winning the 2024 election didn’t just return Donald Trump to power. It also allowed him to dodge multiple criminal cases. And while his unofficial vice president, Elon Musk, didn’t need a Trump win to stay out of jail—at least under any existing charges—the victory likely freed Musk and his companies from regulatory oversight. That’s an exceedingly lucky break for Musk, currently being scrutinized by multiple government agencies for everything from his inflated claims about self-driving Tesla cars to his SpaceX rocket launches polluting wetlands to his purchase of social media platform X—just to name a few.

To be perfectly fair, Trump’s victory means a far friendlier atmosphere for all greedy billionaires who hate regulations, not just Musk personally. But Musk is the one sitting next to Trump at Thanksgiving and the one who threw roughly $260 million at Trump’s campaign while fawning over him on X and in person.

So which pesky investigations and regulations is Musk probably free of now that his bestie is headed to the White House?

For starters, perhaps he’ll get out from under the alphabet soup of agencies looking into Tesla’s so-called full self-driving system, or FSD. Musk has promised a vision of a completely autonomous hands-free Tesla since 2013. It’s not a vision that has ever come true. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has twice required Tesla to recall FSD because of the system’s bad habit of ignoring traffic laws, including being programmed to run stop signs at slow speeds. In October, the agency opened another inquiry after the company reported four crashes, one of which killed a pedestrian, when FSD was used in low-visibility conditions like fog.

The issue isn’t just that FSD is unsafe. It’s also that Tesla hoovered up cash by selling a product that basically doesn’t exist. Tesla owners filed a class-action lawsuit in 2022 alleging the company defrauded them by charging $15,000 for an FSD package that didn’t result in a Tesla being able to drive itself successfully. Tesla’s defense? Full self-driving is merely an aspirational goal, so a failure to provide it isn’t a deliberate fraud—just bad luck. Perhaps that’s the same excuse Tesla would have trotted out in response to the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into whether the company committed wire fraud by deceiving consumers about FSD’s capabilities and securities fraud by deceiving investors.

Trump named former reality show star and former Congressman Sean Duffy to head the Department of Transportation, of which NHTSA is a part, and tapped one of his impeachment defense attorneys, Pam Bondi, to head the DOJ after Matt Gaetz’s nomination flamed out. There’s no reason to think either of these people will grow a spine and continue investigating “first buddy” Elon Musk or Tesla.

Trump’s election also probably gives SpaceX breathing room. Musk’s private space company, which receives literal billions in government money, hasn’t been terribly interested in following government rules.

In September, the Environmental Protection Agency fined SpaceX $148,378 for dumping industrial wastewater and pollutants into wetlands near its Texas launch site. The company paid that fine, albeit with some whining about how it was “disappointing” to pay when it disagreed with the allegations, but it’s planning on challenging the recent $633,000 fine from the Federal Aviation Administration. The regulatory agency proposed the fine after two launches in 2023 where the company allegedly didn’t get FAA approval for launch procedure changes and didn’t follow license requirements.

This isn’t SpaceX’s first run-in with the FAA. The aerospace company paid a $175,000 fine in October 2023 over not submitting required safety data to the agency before a 2022 launch of Starlink satellites. After an April 2023 launch where one of the company’s rockets blew up shortly after takeoff, sending debris over South Texas, the FAA required the agency to make dozens of changes before another launch.

Like the NHTSA, the FAA is part of the Transportation Department. Sean Duffy’s past as an airline industry lobbyist doesn’t inspire confidence that he’ll take a hard line against SpaceX.

And as far as whether the EPA will continue to pose any problems for Musk? Under Trump, that agency will be run by former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, whose primary qualification seems to be hating EPA regulations. He’s voted against replacing lead water pipes and cleaning up brownfields and sees his mission at the EPA as pursuing “energy dominance.” Again, not exactly someone who will bring the hammer down on Musk or his companies.

Musk is also in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the possibility he delayed disclosing his acquisition of Twitter stock in 2022. Investors must disclose when they accumulate 5% of a publicly traded company, a requirement that ostensible super-genius Musk says he misunderstood somehow. Under President Joe Biden, current SEC chair Gary Gensler has aggressively pursued enforcement efforts, a trend in no way expected to continue under whoever Trump picks.

Lightning round! Musk tried hard to violate a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission by giving “Twitter Files” writers improper access to user data, but he was thwarted by Twitter employees who actually followed the order. He’s faced numerous unfair labor practices claims and been investigated multiple times by the National Labor Relations Board, so he’s suing to have the board declared unconstitutional. He lost out on $885 million in government subsidies after the Federal Communications Commission found that Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, couldn’t meet the speed metrics for the government’s rural broadband program.

Luckily for the multibillionaire, the incoming head of the FCC is a pal of Musk’s who thinks it is “regulatory harassment” to require Starlink to meet program requirements.

Musk will also have the advantage of helming a newly invented entity, the cringily titled Department of Government Efficiency (aka DOGE—ugh), that can put his rivals under a microscope. DOGE’s co-head, fellow tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, has already said he’ll examine a government loan to Rivian, a competing electric vehicle manufacturer, calling the loan “a political shot across the bow at Elon Musk and Tesla.” Though DOGE is not an actual department—you need Congress to create one of those—and cannot slash spending directly, Musk could still suggest to Trump that government funding of fiber optic cables in rural areas be gutted. This would leave satellite services like Starlink as the only option for some rural consumers—an option either those consumers or the government would then have to pay for.

Until Trump was elected in 2016, it was impossible to imagine giving billionaires like Musk so much opportunity to use the levers of government to openly and directly benefit themselves. Now that Trump has won a second term in office, Musk is just one of many oligarchs looking forward to an extremely lucrative four years. It’s lucky for them—but terrible for the rest of us.

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GOP doubles down on voter suppression as swing-state races tighten

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Lisa Needham

As Donald Trump’s campaign collapses into nothing but abject racism, the GOP has a predicament: how can they make whipping up a pogrom against Haitians in Ohio and running around with C-list racist influencers like Laura Loomer drive voter turnout in crucial swing states? The answer, of course, is they can’t.

Anyone who thinks this behavior is perfectly fine was already aboard the Trump Train. So, Republicans are doing what they do best: trying to manipulate the ballot and suppress the vote.

Consider North Carolina, which went for Trump in 2020 by only about 75,000 votes. The state is in play this year, with Vice President Kamala Harris currently leading Trump 49% to 46%, though that is within the poll’s margin of error. Harris had two rallies in the state last week, Gov. JD Vance showed up there over the weekend, and both Trump and Vance are going there this week.

But there’s more action behind the scenes, with GOP lawyers using the judicial process to create the most favorable conditions for a candidate who is not interested in appealing to voters and is instead just ranting about mass deportation.

Early last week, the GOP got the North Carolina Supreme Court to remove former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot. Kennedy admitted he is only attempting to remove his name in states where it helps Trump. This victory didn’t just give Trump the edge he was seeking—he polls better in a two-candidate race than with Kennedy on the ballot—it also forced the state to reprint millions of ballots and blow through a Sept. 6 state deadline to begin mailing out absentee ballots. Now, absentee ballots won’t start going out until Sept. 20

Not content with delaying absentee ballots for everyone in the state, the GOP then waited just two days to file another lawsuit. This one is targeted at college students, a demographic that Republicans frequently try to stop from voting. Three weeks ago, the North Carolina Board of Elections voted to allow students and faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to use their digital ID for voting. Switching to digital IDs isn’t some far-fetched thing that only woke schools are doing—beginning in 2025, North Carolina residents can choose a digital driver’s license stored on a smartphone.

The GOP complaint alleges, without any detail, that the mere approval of the use of the digital ID, well before any actual voting, has forced the state Republican party to “divert significant attention and resources into combatting election fraud.” Additionally, it alleges that the state party’s “organizational and voter outreach efforts” are frustrated by the approval of the use of a digital ID, and that it would result in hundreds or thousands of ineligible people voting.

Republicans love attacking the use of student IDs, digital and otherwise. North Dakota, Idaho, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas all require voters to show identification but do not allow any form of student ID. Student voter turnout jumped 14% from 2016 to 2020, and young voters are overwhelmingly Democratic. Making it harder for them to vote is just sound strategy when you otherwise have nothing to offer them.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C.

North Carolina isn’t the only swing state where Republicans are using the courts to gain an advantage they can’t obtain by getting voters to agree with their unhinged ideas. Look at Pennsylvania, where Harris visited six times in seven days, a stretch during which Trump, confusingly, went to California, a state he lost by millions of votes in 2020. Not a terribly sound campaign strategy on his part, but the GOP just prevailed in their lawsuit to block the state from counting any absentee ballots where voters fail to write a date or put the wrong date on their absentee ballot envelopes.

It’s a dumb technicality, and the best course of action, the one that maximizes the franchise of voting, would be to count all those ballots that are otherwise correct. This is an error on the envelope, not the ballot, and it’s one that doesn’t in any way affect determining who someone meant to vote for.

The failure to date or mis-dating is common, with over 4,000 ballots being rejected for dating issues during the April 2024 primary. Given that the 2024 primary turnout in Pennsylvania was less than half of the general election turnout in 2020, it’s inevitable the number of ballots rejected for this reason in the upcoming general election will well exceed 4,000. Biden only won the state by 80,000 votes in 2020, and Trump only won by 44,000 in 2016.

The GOP is trying the same thing in Michigan, where last week it sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over guidance her office issued about verification of absentee ballots. The RNC says Benson’s guidance doesn’t adequately inform clerks that every absentee voter ballot return envelope must contain “a statement by the city or township clerk that the absent voter ballot is approved for tabulation.”

As with North Carolina, this isn’t an error on the ballot itself. This is about rejecting ballots because a state worker neglects to stamp an outside envelope on an otherwise valid absentee ballot.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a news conference.

In Nevada, where Biden prevailed by roughly 34,000 votes in 2020, the state Supreme Court removed perennial spoiler candidate Jill Stein from the ballot because the Green Party used the wrong petition to get signatures. Minor party ballot access petitions require “the attestation that each signatory was a registered voter in the county of his or her residence,” but petitions for ballot referendums, which is what the Green Party used, do not contain that language.

Fresh off insisting the best thing for democracy in North Carolina was to remove a spoiler candidate from the ballot, the GOP ran to the United States Supreme Court to insist the best thing for democracy in Nevada is to keep a spoiler candidate on the ballot. Where in North Carolina, the concern was that Kennedy. would pull votes from Trump, in Nevada the GOP hope is that Stein would pull votes from Harris.

That’s why the lawyer petitioning the Supreme Court isn’t one who has been affiliated with the Green Party or who shares any of Stein’s views. Rather, it’s Jay Sekulow, who coordinated Trump’s personal legal team while Trump was in office and served as defense counsel for Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Normally, deciding who goes on the ballot would belong exclusively to the state. Indeed, that’s why each state has a different way of making that determination and it’s a core principle of federalism. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored that principle earlier this year when it ordered Colorado to keep Trump on the ballot even though he no longer qualified under state law due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. There’s no reason to believe the conservatives on this court won’t decide to throw Trump a helping hand in Nevada.

The GOP has outsourced its ground game and let Trump drain campaign coffers to cover his legal bills. They’re not presenting any appealing ideas to swing voters, instead leaning hard into their rabid, bloodthirsty base. But those voters aren’t enough, which means this path—the one that actively disenfranchises voters—is all they’ve got.

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