Reigning In the Authoritarian...
Trump’s defiance of court orders is ‘testing the fences’ of the rule of law
Administration’s ‘unprecedented degree of resistance’ to judiciary undercuts its authority and weakens democracy.
Donald Trump’s second administration has shown an “unprecedented degree of resistance” to adverse court rulings, experts say, part of a forceful attack on the American judiciary that threatens to undermine the rule of law, undercut a co-equal branch of government and weaken American democracy.
The attacks, experts say, threaten one of the fundamental pillars of American government: that the judicial branch has the power to interpret the law and the other branches will abide by its rulings.
The attack came to a head this week when the Trump administration ignored an order from US district judge James Boasberg to turn planes carrying deportees around. “I don’t care what the judges think,” Thomas Homan, charged with enforcing Trump’s deportation agenda, said in a Fox News television interview on Monday as the decision came under scrutiny. The next day, Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached, calling him a “radical left lunatic”.
For months, the Trump administration has made it clear they believe they can ignore judicial orders. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” vice-president JD Vance tweeted on 9 February. Elon Musk, Trump’s top adviser, has repeatedly called for impeaching judges, and is donating to Republicans in Congress who have supported doing so. House Republicans have introduced resolutions to impeach Boasberg and four other judges who have ruled against Trump.
Trump’s call for impeachment prompted a rare public rebuke from chief justice John Roberts, who said in a statement on Wednesday: “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 process exists for that purpose.”
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University who studies the federal courts, said there was no parallel situation in American history. Trump officials, he said, were trying to see what they could get away with in front of federal judges.
“They’re testing the fences in ways in which they can claim plausible deniability when congressional Republicans say, you can’t defy the courts,” he said. “Whether you call it a crisis or not, this is certainly an unprecedented degree of resistance on the part of the executive branch to adverse court rulings.”
J Michael Luttig, a well-respected former conservative federal judge, said on MSNBC on Tuesday that “America is in a constitutional crisis”. “The president of the United States has essentially declared war on the rule of law in America,” he said.
Luttig told the Guardian that he believed the US supreme court’s ruling last summer finding Trump had immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undergirded his attacks on the courts. “It is the reason for his emboldenment,” he said.
During Trump’s first administration, the federal courts played a major role in constraining administration policies that violated the US constitution and federal law. Of the 246 cases litigated involving efforts to implement policies through federal agencies, the Trump administration won 54 cases and lost 192 cases or withdrew the actions, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.
Since Trump’s second term began in January, more than a dozen judges have blocked his executive actions, including efforts to mass fire federal workers, freeze federal funding and end birthright citizenship.
During the first Trump administration, Vladeck noted, officials appeared more willing to “go back to the drawing board” to rework policies after they had been halted by the courts to make them comply with the law, he said.
“You saw a lot more effort to rationalize everything the administration was doing in law, as opposed to in power,” he said.
The attack on the judiciary has not just included impeachment, but also has extended to personal attacks on judges, prompting concerns about their safety. Supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister received a hoax bomb threat, the New York Times reported. Some of the attacks have included sending pizza orders to the homes of judges and family members as a way of threatening jurists that the public knows where they live.
America is approaching a crossroads. Whether we remain a democracy governed by the rule of law or whether we become just another authoritarian fascist state.
Reigning in the authoritarian mind set of Trump and his chaotic administration and its attack on democracy and the rule of law rest with the congress as well as the courts.
Trump, as he has already shown, WILL use threats, coercion, and intimidation in the attempt to silence his many critics.
Stand up America and fight this authoritarian until he learns that he is not and never has been a King.
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