Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
It’s another week of the federal courts struggling to function in the face of utter lawlessness by the executive branch. The lower courts are pushing back on the administration’s attempts to get confidential voter data to rig the election, but at the same time, the judiciary is buckling under pressure from climate deniers and letting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem deport tens of thousands of people. It’s not great!
Another court tells the administration to pound sand about voter rolls
A federal judge in Michigan is the latest to tell the administration that no, it is not entitled to the personal information of every voter in the state. Not even if it sues for it.
Michigan joins California and Oregon in being the proud recipients of court decisions denying these attempts. Regrettably, some red states are voluntarily handing all their voter data to the administration. At least two states—Texas and Alaska—have gone so far as to sign an agreement with the Department of Justice that allows the DOJ to do things it is neither qualified for nor constitutionally allowed to do.
The states administer elections, period. It’s right there in the Constitution. Congress can make or alter regulations, but there’s no role whatsoever for the executive branch. Nonetheless, Texas and Alaska are agreeing to let the DOJ analyze their voter files and then tell them to remove whatever voters the DOJ demands be removed. No, the DOJ has no experience in voter list maintenance, nor do we know exactly how they will “analyze” anything. Regardless, signing the agreement means removing any voter flagged by the administration within 45 days.
Sure, terrific, except for the part where that likely violates the National Voter Registration Act, which has specific requirements for states to remove voters. But who cares about laws when you’re dismantling the constitutional order?
Bondi makes a move to salvage the unsalvageable James and Comey indictments
Though fake attorney Lindsey Halligan has finally departed, the DOJ is not through insisting that she was totally legally in her job and also totally legally obtained indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Beclowning itself thoroughly, the DOJ just filed its brief with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to reinstate Halligan and both indictments. The indictments should survive because Attorney General Pam Bondi retroactively “ratified” them with her mind, which is not a thing.
Lindsey Halligan
The problem for the administration is that if these indictments are reinstated, they are right back to having to deal with the fact that the indictments themselves are terrible and will likely get thrown out for other reasons.
In the unlikely event the Fourth Circuit agrees with the DOJ here, or if they run to their big cool conservative friends at the Supreme Court to get their way, welcome back to multiple defense motions about the wild irregularities of the grand jury proceedings.
Enjoy the fact that no career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia will touch these cases. Oh, and also, motions for selective and vindictive prosecution, as it is amply clear that these indictments were brought because Trump demanded they be brought. Good luck with that.
Federal judiciary lets conservative climate deniers decide what is and isn’t science
In an exceedingly not-great development, the Federal Judicial Center agreed to remove the climate chapter of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
Yes, this is the official research arm of the judicial branch agreeing to the demands of red-state attorneys general that it is unfair to include actual true information about climate science because that would mean that fossil fuel companies might have to pay money.
This came about because last December, the FJC released its first update of the 1,692-page behemoth in 15 years. Because it is an actual manual about actual science, written in conjunction with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, it had over 90 pages about the scientific consensus on climate change.
But these days, we don’t listen to scientists or experts. We listen to President Donald Trump, climate deniers, and big companies that stand to profit by polluting in the exact ways that exacerbate climate change. So, the actual science had to go. Sorry, law clerks and judges who would normally use this reference to better understand the scientific issues in a climate-related case. How about you just call Trump instead, and he can tell you about how windmills are killing our country?
The long stupid shadow of the shadow docket strikes again
The conservatives on the Supreme Court have proven very amenable to the Trump administration’s constant demands for emergency relief, issuing sweeping rulings letting Trump do whatever he wants—no pesky legal reasoning required. However, now lower courts are stuck with an ever-growing body of cases where they are required to follow the dictates of the Supreme Court, but where the court hasn’t bothered to explain itself.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
The latest, and grimmest, occasion for this is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals breezily and briefly explaining why it is staying a detailed, thoughtful lower court order that had blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from ending Temporary Protected Status for over 60,000 people from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Despite the fact that the lower court found Noem’s actions were driven by racist conspiracy theories, the Ninth Circuit said nah, no big deal, because the Supreme Court has already said Noem can do what she wants. So, even though there is no reasoning whatsoever in those Supreme Court orders, they nonetheless somehow bind the Ninth Circuit and compel a decision that, no matter how flimsy, racist, or pretextual Noem’s reasons for ending TPS, she gets to do so.
Cool judicial system we have here.
The Fulton County raid keeps looking worse and worse
It isn’t just that the FBI raided an election site, which is unprecedented. It isn’t just that National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard showed up for the raid, despite being barred by law from helping with domestic law enforcement efforts. It isn’t just that Trump decided to ring up the FBI agents who conducted the raid to thank them for their work.
It’s that the affidavit for the search warrant is nothing but already-debunked nonsense put forth by Kurt Olsen, who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election. Olsen now has a job in the administration where he can push his unhinged conspiracy theories far and wide. This is as lawless—and dangerous—as it gets.
