Over the last year or two I’ve been taking notes on a bunch of topics that strike me as worth writing about, and I’m going to start rotating those kind of “evergreen” columns in between my usual commentary and mockery.
One of those topics is the kind of lawfare that leftist lower-court judges have been waging against everything Trump has been trying to do. Disclaimer: I’m not an always Trumper who thinks every policy of his is great, and beyond legal reproach.
Off the top of my head, I don’t like the way he’s rolled out his tariffs (semi-randomly, often in response to a particular action that bothered him, and driven more by personal pique than by consistent principle), or the way he’s hurt his credibility by constantly threatening to strike Iran, and then promising that a deal to end the conflict is a few days away, only to reverse himself. I’d much rather we just start escorting every ship in the Gulf through the strait, and then blasting every IRGC attempt to interfere.
But that being said, the vast majority of Trump’s executive orders and legal actions have been clearly within his purview as commander in chief. More than half of his EOs seem to be just clean reversals of EOs issued by Biden or Obama. And if their original EOs or actions – giving TPS to Haitians and others with no congressional approval, allowing foreigners into the country before any asylum claims they make are adjudicated, etc. – were allowed to stand as if legitimate, any judge stopping Trump’s action would have to explain why it was perfectly fine for Biden to change policy A to B, but it’s a frightening affront to the constitution for Trump to go back from B to A.
But they don’t seem to be doing much explaining. The underlying legal principle seems to be that it’s fine when a Dem president does it, but verboten for a GOP president to do the same thing.
Another example of this trend happened on Friday, but before I get there, I’ll cover several examples that I noted over the last few months. And please apply this blanket caveat: I’m no law-talkin’ guy – I mean, lawyer! – so I’m just going to apply my God-given crystal brain and common sense to all of the following rulings.
Back in late June, three different judges made three different partisan rulings on three consecutive days. The first judge said that it’s unconstitutional for a US president to use a social security database to ensure that noncitizens can’t vote, because it would violate voters’ privacy.
If this information is already in government hands, for government use, and it’s going to be kept in government hands to conduct a search that will remain private, unless and until it turns out that non-citizens are illegally voting, how could that possibly violate anyone’s privacy? ‘
Oh, by the way, this judge is a District Court Judge for DC (strike one), was appointed by the late Joe Biden (strike 2), and is named Sparkle Sooknanan (she’s out!). I don’t want to be petty, but “Sparkle” is an acceptable name for a children’s television show host, or possibly for an exotic dancer. But “Judge Sparkle” is fundamentally wrong.
The second day’s ruling came from another DC judge, this one an Obama appointee (Unexpectedly!) who ruled that it’s unconstitutional for a president to ban the spending of taxpayer-provided SNAP benefits on sugary drinks and candy. Because somewhere in the Constitution the Founders obviously dictated that hard-working citizens need to pay for non-workers’ morbid obesity and diabetes.
The third-day hat-trick ruling came from another Obama appointee, Judge Denise Casper (who is most definitely not a friendly ghost), this time from Massachusetts (Unexpectedly!). She used her authority as commander in chief to declare that it’s unconstitutional to require proof of citizenship to vote, or to have your ballots be received by Election Day.
Because the Founders were adamant that we must count the illegal votes of non-citizen foreigners here illegally, no matter when they cast them. Duh.
Two weeks after these dictates came down from this Triumvirate of Stupid, Sparkle was back, and she was angry. But instead of yelling at the children on camera, or giving a lap dance so aggressive that it injured a customer in the champagne room, she insisted that her orders be followed, despite another judge ordering that they be set aside.
It seems that four other federal courts had already approved settlements ruling that the social security database could be used to prevent illegal voting (Duh!), so federal Judge Kent Wetherell – a non-insane Trump appointee in the Florida district, whose only blot on his record is that he graduated from Florida State – ordered DHS to reinstate the rules that would prevent illegal voting. Instead of pausing her ruling while a higher court could look at the conflict and then rule that she’s out of her gourd, Sparkle stomped her feet and demanded that her orders be followed.
Because if local judges cannot over-rule executive decisions about executive branch functions made by the chief executive, democracy will die in darkness, or something.
Did I mention that she wasn’t born in the US, and has dual citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago and the US? Because…yeah.
Which brings us to this past Friday, when Judge Jeannette A. Vargas – a Biden appointee who had once clerked for Justice Sotomayor – issued exactly the kind of ruling that you’d expect from a Biden appointee who clerked for Sotomayor. This time the horrific crime against humanity that she was thwarting was the administration’s policy to suspend issuing visas for immigrants “while the State Department is reassessing its vetting procedures under existing immigration law.”
I mean, it’s not like under the current procedures, a certain Cadaver in Chief recently let tens of millions of poorly vetted immigrants into America, and issued visas out of a t-shirt cannon to anybody who wanted one, only to see many of them violate American laws and harm American citiz—
Oh no, wait.
Never mind.
Anyway, Judge Mini-Biden said that she thinks that our immigration laws give consular officers “exclusive authority and discretion” to determine whether an immigrant is eligible for a visa.
Did I mention that I’m not a law-talkin’ guy? Well I’m not. But I did a little digging into these “consular officials,” whom JMB (Judge Mini-Biden) wants to set up as little emperors who can wave people either into or out of our country.
And it turns out that the embassies and consular offices are part of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, which is part of the Department of State (headed by the Secretary of State, in this case Marco Rubio), which is an agency in the Executive branch, headed by the President, in this case DJT.
So the judge is saying that the consular officials, who are employees under their direct boss the Sec State, who is under his ultimate boss the President, must be allowed to use their own discretion to determine whether millions of foreigners are allowed to enter the country, with no ability for anyone above them in the chain of command to question their royal decrees.
You know, just like a fry cook at McDonalds can ignore the McDonalds manager and CEO and determine store policy, or a paralegal in a law firm can ignore the firm partners and determine firm policy, or a private in the army can over-rule generals and determine a battle plan.
Ridiculous! I’m pretty sure that when a process is determined by explicit legal language, that’s the language you are supposed to follow. (Some might call that “originalism” or “strict constructionism.”) But when such a process is left up to the “discretion” of a given department, said discretion would naturally come from the top of the chain of command, rather than being decided on an ad hoc basis by the whims of whichever low-level employee happens to be working that day.
I’m detecting a subtle pattern here. No, not a bunch of female leftist lawyers appointed by leftist presidents making reflexively anti-conservative and anti-Trump rulings that coincidentally advance leftist power by restricting the power of a president who was democratically elected.
Oh no, wait. Yes! That’s exactly the subtle pattern I am noticing.
Countdown to a higher court reversing this latest baseless, lawfare, power-grab of a ruling: …3…2…1…
Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!
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Martin Simpson 