Here’s what happened under the Trump administration this week that you may have missed.
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There’s a lot of last-minute election litigation
Trump’s Justice Department has been extraordinarily politically active leading up to the election, a break from almost all past modern administrations. The Justice Department has traditionally stayed quiet in the months before an election to avoid being seen as putting its thumb on the scale for candidates.
But Trump is embracing and taking credit for the election-related litigation as voters cast ballots. “I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters of the government’s lawsuit to block the certification of results in the Alaska Senate race if the Republican narrowly loses.
The Justice Department has also sued some Democratic-led states, alleging there are noncitizens on their voter rolls and launching a criminal investigation. Courts have been skeptical of the government’s case so far.
And the Trump administration has executed search warrants and filed criminal charges against some of Trump’s political foes. This week, former FBI director James B. Comey was charged for a third time with a federal crime (on the same day his daughter Maurene Comey won a wrongful firing lawsuit against the government).
Critics see a Justice Department trying to intervene in an election — but struggling. David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney who is head of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, pointed out that tens of millions of people have already voted, and it’s possible this midterm sets a participation record.
“The DOJ appears to have unintentionally waited until the last minute to help create the most chaos and confusion,” he said. “And the good news is, they are failing.”
The Trump administration is seeking greater control over immigration courts
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and detains people suspected of being in the country illegally, they usually appear before an immigration judge for deportation proceedings. For decades, those judges have had the discretion to close cases rather than deport a migrant. Advocates say it spares an overloaded immigration system and some particularly sympathetic migrants, like crime victims or children, from deportation. Critics say it’s a form of backdoor amnesty.
The Trump administration has sought to overturn that practice and won this week at the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration has also been quietly and aggressively putting pressure on the immigration court system to deport more migrants. The judges serve inside the Justice Department, and Trump has fired more than 100 of them — including one who spoke out last week to The Washington Post, saying she was pressured to reverse some rulings. This week, Democrats are demanding an investigation and pushing legislation to move the immigration court outside the purview of the executive branch.
Trump’s planned arch is dividing veteran groups
Veterans have sued to stop a planned 250-foot triumphal arch in D.C., on which Trump is racing to start construction. It’s not a monument to veterans, but it would tower over Arlington National Cemetery, casting shadows on graves. A judge is considering whether Trump can go forward with the project, and this week an influential veterans group, among others, voiced its support, signing onto a brief in favor of it. But a day later, the head of the Vietnam Veterans of America said that he was misled by the White House and that the brief “went further than I anticipated or intended.”
Trump is also trying to move quickly to remake a public golf course in Washington, despite ongoing litigation over it. This week, a judge stopped all removal of trees. She had previously said she was furious the government didn’t listen to her.
Although government lawyers had argued in court last week that they have no plan to shut down the golf course, this week the government said it will shut down the whole area. The administration plans to spend $1.2 million, collected from visitor fees from national parks, to transform the site into what Trump has described as a “champion” golf course. A House Democrat is trying to block Trump from using taxpayer money to redevelop the course.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
The post What happened under Trump this week appeared first on Washington Post.
