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.
This week, the usual alphabet soup of bad actors make an appearance, from DHS to ICE to the DOJ. But the Trump administration likes to keep it fresh, mix it up a bit, so we’ve also got bad behavior from the Department of Education and some low-level grifting from a Department of Energy appointee. Variety is indeed the spice of life.
DHS: So we lied. So what?
For months, the Department of Homeland Security has been insisting to the plaintiffs—and the judge—in a lawsuit over conditions at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, that it simply could not retrieve two weeks of video footage because there was a system crash.
That system crash was mighty convenient, happening on Oct. 31, one day after the lawsuit was filed. Now, though, DHS is telling the court that actually, that footage was never recorded at all. Also, the plaintiffs should just stop hassling them for it because even if footage did exist, it is of “marginal relevance.” Marginal relevance to a lawsuit that is literally about conditions inside the immigrant detention facility in Broadview. Ohhhhkay.
Rather than admitting that this is quite the suspicious flip-flop, the Department of Justice filing instead slams the plaintiffs. Per the administration, it is “simply false” for plaintiffs to say that the “circumstances under which this footage was lost or not recorded remain unclear.”
Yeah, what is more crystal clear than “we lost the footage in a crash, no wait, we never recorded it, thanks to some unspecified equipment malfunction or failure”? How dare the plaintiffs ask for any information about the video system that didn’t crash, but also didn’t record? How dare they allege this explanation might be the slightest bit problematic?
The government believes the real issue is those meddling plaintiffs who dare to question them, so now the DOJ has asked the court to “rein in plaintiffs’ attempt to seek discovery beyond what is necessary.” Buddy, the plaintiffs aren’t the problem here.
Trump administration finds new way to attack Minnesota
Sure, Minnesota is awash in armed, masked, violent ICE and CBP agents, but thus far, that isn’t bringing the state to heel like Trump wants. So, why not ratchet up the pressure with a different, yet also totally lawless effort?
Back in September, the Department of Education “investigated” Minnesota, determining the state was violating Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination by allowing trans athletes to participate in high school sports. Of course, Title IX says no such thing, and the Department of Education cites no such law. Initially, the DOJ threatened the state by sending a brief letter saying that Trump issued an executive order to “prioritize enforcement actions against athletic associations that deny girls an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them to compete against boys.”
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That, of course, is not law. What else you got? “Requiring girls to compete against boys in sports and athletic events violates Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972. And under the Constitution, federal law—including Title IX—is ‘the supreme Law of the Land.’”
Uh, sure, but we’re back to the part where this isn’t a law. This is Pam Bondi saying that Donald Trump’s animus toward trans people is the law because he says it is. In September, the Education Department ratcheted up this claim, saying that Minnesota’s refusal to ban trans kids from playing sports violated Trump’s executive order. But the state can’t violate an executive order, because it is, you guessed it, not a law.
Nevertheless, on Jan. 26, the Education Department announced it was referring Minnesota to the DOJ for enforcement action for its flagrant violation of Donald Trump’s feelings about trans people. This was likely inevitable, given that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued the administration over this in April, a lawsuit the administration continues to try to get tossed out. However, doing it now, while DHS lays siege to the state, makes it pretty evident the administration is throwing everything it can at Minnesota in the vain hope it will buckle.
How dare judges require honesty from DOJ attorneys
Down in the Middle District of Florida, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton Jr. is not happy with the Trump administration and is threatening sanctions against the U.S. attorney for the district, Gregory Kehoe, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joy Warner. The DOJ is currently fighting a habeas petition from Javier Rivero, challenging his detention. The government, inevitably, has been fighting this, but in doing so, they presented an argument to Dalton that … well, let’s just have Dalton say it:
Judges across the country—the vast majority who have considered this question—have told the Government many times in the past few months that its interpretation of the law is wrong. This is no partisan stance: judges appointed by every President from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump have said so.
Well, so what, man? Is the government expected to actually acknowledge that those cases exist? As Dalton put it, “The government is free to advance an unpopular legal theory, but its lawyers must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations."
Incredibly unfair of Dalton to require DOJ attorneys to adhere to the duty of candor to the court and not simply hide unfavorable cases. Doesn’t Dalton know that the official stance of the DOJ is that it is an abuse of power for a judge to tell any DOJ attorney they have to follow the same ethics rules as anyone else?
If we have to go state by state, we will
Protesters and journalists in Oregon have been forced to file a motion for a temporary restraining order to try to stop ICE from brutalizing them for exercising their First Amendment rights. If that sounds familiar, it’s because there were already similar cases in California, Illinois, and Minnesota.
Related | Journalists arrested as Trump team sets fire to First Amendment
First, there shouldn’t be a need for protesters or journalists in any state to protect their right to peacefully protest or observe, one of the longest-held rights we have. But perhaps more importantly, there shouldn’t be a need for protesters and journalists to have to keep filing what is essentially the same lawsuit in state after state. But thanks to the Supreme Court banning nationwide injunctions, this is how things have to go these days: brick by brick, case by case, fight by fight. And the people are not backing down.
Awww, isn’t this quaint?
Remember how, during the first Trump administration, the notion that government employees would use their official positions to promote private interests seemed like an absolutely catastrophic ethical violation? Remember how back then, Ivanka Trump keeping her vanity clothing company open until 2018 felt a bit unseemly, even though she stepped away in 2017 to do whatever it was she did in her father’s first administration?
Those days are well behind us now that Trump has turned the government into a series of turbocharged opportunities to blatantly grift, with his efforts netting him at least $1.4 billion in the past year alone. However, Assistant Secretary for Energy Audrey Robertson is kicking it old school, keeping her ethical violations a little more low-key.
Robertson, a former investment banker and oil exec with no government experience, must have skipped the orientation day when they covered government ethics. That’s the only conceivable explanation for why Robertson thought it was a stellar idea to appear in an advertisement for a jewelry company in her official role, saying that she was “now honored to serve our country at the Department of Energy as the Assistant Secretary of Energy (EERE) for the USA.”
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Now, if you go to the 2026 Wish Book for Trice Jewelers, you’ll see a little pop-up saying “without Audrey” as it loads. However, the complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has a link to the archived version, where you can see Audrey in all her ethics-violating glory on page 12.
CREW’s complaint asks the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General to investigate. Of course, Trump fired the department’s inspector general in his January 2025 purge of watchdogs, so it isn’t at all clear whether anyone is minding the candy store there.
Honestly, the real crime here might be that the jewelry is tacky as hell—the exact sort of overpriced gaudiness you’d expect a denizen of TrumpWorld to pimp.
