Even as a kid, when my craving for gifts was at its peak, I still preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas. It was the relaxed, unornamented holiday, when the family’s focus was simply on good food and each other (and football). As the name says, it’s about giving thanks, not things.
What a blessing to have a day devoted, as a nation, to thinking about who and what to be grateful for. And thanks for that to Abraham Lincoln, a president whose legacy was holding the nation together, not driving it apart.
Though family and friends as usual are top of mind, this year I’m thankful as well to some strangers: the many federal judges in district and appeals courts, including appointees of President Trump, who’ve withstood threats of impeachment and even death threats to try to hold the wannabe king and his toadying turkeys to account (with little support to date, and some brushbacks, from the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court).
Judges of all stripes have blocked the administration’s mass firings of public servants, slashing of federal funds provided by law, violations of individuals’ civil rights and private data, extrajudicial deportations to foreign prisons and so many more abuses of power.
This Thanksgiving week opened with a dramatic reminder of the founders’ wisdom in creating an independent judiciary — for which we should be especially thankful given that their other supposed check on an imperial president, Congress, is shirking its constitutional duty these days.
On Monday, District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie of South Carolina threw out the Justice Department’s Trumped-up cases against two nemeses of the retributive president: James Comey, the Republican former FBI director who defied first-term Trump’s unethical asks and was fired for it, and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump and his family business for fraud. Currie, a Clinton appointee, chucked the cases because the Trump-picked U.S. attorney who brought the indictments, Lindsey Halligan, had “no lawful authority” — meaning Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s attempted back-door appointment of Halligan was invalid.
Currie isn’t alone in assailing the “Justice” Department prosecutions. Separate judges have been hearing Comey’s and James’ contentions that the cases should be dismissed as vindictive. They’ve seemed sympathetic. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, a Biden appointee, earlier this month slammed government prosecutors for what seemed their “indict first, investigate later” approach.
Another recent reminder that federal judges stand as the bulwark against Trumpism: Last Friday in Washington, District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Reagan appointee elevated by Clinton, blocked the administration’s latest exploitation of Americans’ formerly confidential personal data for its policy ends. She said the administration violated privacy rights and federal law by rummaging through I.R.S. data to help identify migrants to deport.
Not even a year into Trump’s second term, his track record in the courts captures both the sweep of his challenges to the rule of law and brave judges’ pushback.
And for those still wondering if Trump would defy court orders, that question has been settled for months: Yes. He already has.
A Washington Post analysis in July found that judges had ruled against the Trump administration in nearly half of the 337 lawsuits against it during the president’s first six months back in office. In more than one-third of the cases that went against it, the administration was found to have been noncompliant or outright defiant of the judges’ orders.
An example: In May, District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of Maryland, a Trump appointee, described the government’s response to her order that it seek the return of a deportee imprisoned in El Salvador as “we haven’t done anything and don’t intend to.”
According to Politico, numerous judges’ rulings in cases involving roundups, detention and deportations of immigrants amounted to “one of the most thorough legal rebukes in recent memory.” By its count, more than 100 federal judges — appointees of every president since Reagan, including a dozen Trump picks — had ruled at least 200 times that the administration’s actions violated individuals’ civil rights or were otherwise illegal.
Just Security, a nonpartisan group that tracks legal developments related to national security and the rule of law, as of last week had documented 26 cases in which the administration failed to comply with court orders, as well as more than 60 cases in which judges complained of government lawyers’ misinformation or misrepresentations and 68 cases in which judges had found government actions “arbitrary and capricious.”
Such tallies are simply unprecedented. I’m thankful for the trackers as well as the judges, on behalf of the historical record.
Team Trump’s malevolence, incompetence and disregard of truth has undermined its already shaky legal position. Even as the Supreme Court remains maddeningly deferential to presidential power, judges complain that Trump’s Justice Department has forfeited the deference traditionally accorded to its lawyers — the “presumption of regularity.”
In September, District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote that the president’s justification for deploying the Oregon National Guard to what he called “War ravaged” Portland, Ore., was “simply untethered to the facts.” And last week, District Judge Sara Ellis, an Obama appointee, wrote that immigration agents’ use of force in Chicago “shocks the conscience” and accused Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino — who got the Chicago command after his cruelty in Los Angeles — of “outright lying” in court.
A number of judges have threatened to find administration lawyers in contempt of court. Last week, District Judge James Boasberg, a Bush and Obama appointee, started down that road after first suggesting last spring that administration officials had defied his earlier order against deportation flights to El Salvador. Trump has singled out Boasberg as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.” The judge, like too many others, has endured emails and calls threatening assassination, SWAT visits and pizza-doxxings (Message: I know where you live).
Yet these courageous judges persist. And for that, be thankful every day.
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