The Big Trump Enemy Left to Be Cut Down to Size: the Judiciary

 

The Big Trump Enemy Left to Be Cut Down to Size: the Judiciary

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

“The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.” 

7-2 Supreme Court Order, early April 19th, effective immediately

Relatively “mild” attacks against this institution have been there since the start of Trump 2.0. You can start with the violent January 6, 2021 mob that attacked the Capitol, resulting in serious injuries and death, including vicious attacks on police officers… all caught on video to eliminate any doubt. The blanket pardon of these convicted felons was the first round of Trump’s rejecting the decisions of the courts; violence in support of Trump was now justified. The rule of law took a hard upper cut to the jaw. It was a message to any court that might want to temper violent support for King Trump.

The next Trump live grenade Trump tossed into the cauldron of rising intolerance and seething hatred was the appointment of cabinet members, all prepared to put loyalty to Donald Trump above all else. Trump uber-loyalist, AG Pam Bondi, made sure that the DOJ was purged of any senior counsel who had taken a position against Trump, even if so ordered by their superiors. The DOJ was now Trump’s personal law firm. Homeland Security head, Kristi Noem (not a lawyer) also embraced the harsh “deport gang members fast without trial” edict of both Donald Trump and Border Tsar, Tom Homan. Bondi, through the Trump DOJ law team, pushed her staff into defending any and all attempts to insert due process into the system, readily accepting that 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act was within Trump’s if he declared an “invasion,” oddly at a time when border crossings from Mexico were at an all-time low. Where was that invasion again?

While Elon Musk wasn’t really saving taxpayers any money, the once powerful federal agencies were being defunded, and bureaucrats were fired by the tens of thousands. Musk ensured that federal agencies no longer had the power to contain Trump’s ambitions. Stripping as many powerful law firms as Trump could limited the quality of super-competent legal counsel from challenging Trump under constitutional restrictions. Matt Laslo, wring for the April 20th Raw Story, explains how Trump is pressuring his House majority to cut the federal judiciary, purportedly an equal branch of government, at the knees:

“Dismantling the federal government won’t be complete without upending the judicial branch — or so many conservatives argue, which is why rank-and-file Republicans are pressuring party leaders to fall in line and join White House efforts to purge the nation’s judiciary… Before Congress left town for its two-week Easter recess, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to placate his right flank by ushering a bill restricting national injunctions through the House. Party leaders have also promised hearings.

“None of that’s good enough for many rank-and-file Republicans, especially because President Donald Trump and his agency-gutting sidekick Elon Musk have tossed their support behind fringe-right proposals to impeach federal judges… ‘ There’s gotta be accountability,’ Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) told Raw Story. ‘If we can't impeach them, we should defund them.’… The two-term Congressman is one of five Republicans who’ve authored seven separate articles of impeachment targeting six judges. All in the first three months of this new Congress…

“Musk has been the face of the Trump administration’s purge efforts, but even a billionaire’s powers are limited… The wealthiest man in the world has been dropping millions to reshape the nation’s courts in his laissez faire, if corporate-focused image, but even Republican eyes rolled after his failed, high-profile effort to tilt the recent record-shattering Wisconsin Supreme Court contest. But, when he’s not handing out oversized $1 million checks, Musk’s been attacking the nation’s judiciary from the shadows.

“Newly released campaign finance reports reveal Musk has been quietly padding Republicans’ campaign coffers. Well, at least the accounts of far-right Republicans who’ve been targeting federal judges who rule against Trump and DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency.” That nasty Constitution didn’t mention funding, but …. Even when an individual, legally in the United States, fell into the deportation to a horrible prison in El Salvador (where the US was paying for incarceration), the “Trump administration has said that once individuals are outside of U.S. jurisdiction, there is little they can do to bring them back to the United States…

“Trump and his top advisors met in the Oval Office with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and were almost gleeful in saying nothing could be done to return any of the prisoners once they had left the U.S… The [Supreme Court] had said the administration had a duty to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported in error to El Salvador.” Rachel Uranga, Andrea Castillo and David G. Savage for April 20th Los Angeles Times. Even as Abrego Garcia was transferred to a lesser prison facility after he was visited by a US Senator, the Trump administration dawdled, delaying and asking for clarification for an order that was obvious to everyone else.

Indeed, over Easter weekend, as the Trump administration prepped for planeloads of purported members of a violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (so designated by ICE without tangible proof presented to a neutral tribunal), the Supreme Court intervened issuing the order cited above. The litigation, brought by the ACLU, was forced to dive into the deportation process based on reports from detainees like these:

“ACLU lawyers argued that the move was necessary because officials at Bluebonnet told detainees they will be deported and asked them to sign notices of removal in English based on their alleged affiliation with Tren de Aragua… One man at the facility sent his wife a TikTok video depicting detainees, according to a declaration submitted by ACLU lawyers from Michelle Brané, executive director of a nonprofit that provides services for asylum seekers. In it, one young man says they are all being labeled as members of Tren de Aragua. They aren’t allowed to call their families, and the detainees don’t know where they will be removed to, he says in the video… ‘They’re saying we have to be removed, quickly, because we are a terrorist threat to the country,’ he says.

“Another detainee says they were given a paper to sign but were told that, whether they signed or not, they would be removed from the country… A third detainee says, ‘We are not members of Tren de Aragua. We are normal, civil people.’… A fourth says, ‘I don’t have a deportation order. I have all my paperwork in order. I have my American children here,’ he says. ‘I was arrested with no arrest warrant and they want me deported.’” LA Times.

Yet the various “whatever Trump says” cabinet loyalists railed against the court, saying that it was participating in keeping violent gang members in the United States, despite an overwhelming popular sentiment supporting quick deportation. But that is not remotely what the ACLU or the Supreme Court were saying. Simply, just declaring someone to be a guilty criminal is not enough under our Constitution, to imprison them. All individuals are accorded a right to defend themselves before a neutral court. Otherwise, the federal government could dispense with criminal trials whatsoever simply by attaching the right label to the relevant detainee, which to Trump, could be US citizen as well.

I’m Peter Dekom, what is bothering me even more is that Donald Trump is attempting to use the battle of deportation as a distraction against his utterly failed set of economic policies that are increasingly showing that the damage he alone created is just beginning.