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.
Welcome to another week of injustice, Trump administration style. This week, we’ve got a reliable oldie but goodie, with the Department of Justice running to its best friend, the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. But just to mix it up a bit, we’ve got a state court creeping in to show that hey, don’t count them out in the conservative race to make everything worse.
Time to rush to the Supreme Court … again
The Trump administration is, yet again, demanding emergency relief from the very pliable conservatives on the United States Supreme Court.
This time, it’s because it is an extreme emergency that President Donald Trump be allowed to immediately end temporary protected status—aka TPS— for Haitians and start deporting them. Wouldn’t want to have to wait for litigation to conclude, nosiree. Definitely better to deport first, go to court later.
Related | Trump canceled temporary legal status for more than 1.5M immigrants in 2025
As per usual, the argument is that if Trump can’t do exactly what he wants, it hurts his feelings and national security, so the Supreme Court has to let him do it. And they probably will, given that they let the administration end TPS for Venezuelans even as litigation is still going on. It’s absurd to say that Trump’s ability to instantly tee up deportations outweighs the harm to people who are actually deported, but that’s where we are now, thanks to this Supreme Court.
The Wall Street Journal confirms what we all knew
Remember way back last week when the DOJ said it was dropping its appeals against the law firms that didn’t bend the knee and bribe the president, only to have to walk that back the next day?
It was a semi-mystery at the time as to why, though it seemed pretty likely this was nothing but Trump changing his addled mind on a whim and the DOJ dutifully going along, even though it makes them look ridiculous and further dents the agency’s credibility.
Related | The DOJ giveth, the DOJ taketh away
And yep, that was exactly it. Trump got mad because “I never signed off on that.” Yeah, well, that used to not be a thing back when the DOJ was independent of the president. Yes, as Chris Geidner points out, Trump’s executive orders are at the heart of the case, so this is actually the type of case where it would be normal to have consulted him or that Trump “would have trusted that DOJ, in consultation with counsel’s office, made the right decision.”
Sure, but that would be an orderly, normal thing. Instead, we have whatever mess this turned into now that the DOJ lets Trump dictate its every move.
The DOJ just can’t resist vindictive prosecutions
The problem with the DOJ being reduced to Trump’s personal law firm for settling his grievances is that Trump has been dumb enough to make his demands out in the open.
So Smartmatic, the voting machine company that the DOJ is currently criminally prosecuting for ostensibly paying bribes to election officials in the Philippines, has the rare opportunity to make a decent run at getting the case dismissed for vindictive prosecution.
Those cases are notoriously hard to win, because a defendant has to prove that they were targeted for prosecution based on improper vindictive means, and singled out for prosecution because of some personal or governmental animus. However, since Trump keeps openly calling for the prosecution of anyone he perceives as being at fault for not handing him the 2020 election. Smartmatic might have a chance.
Sometimes state courts suck too
Usually we’re here to talk about how bad things are at the DOJ and in the federal courts, but hey, let’s not sleep on the Kansas state courts stepping up to be awful!
After Kansas told all transgender residents, out of the blue, that their driver’s licenses were immediately invalid and they had to go get new ones that reflect their sex assigned at birth, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Kansas state court seeking a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the law.
The court refused, with a mushy bit of whining about how the court just doesn’t know enough yet about the law or the case, and whoopsiedoodle, guess this anti-trans law just has to go into effect right away.
The plaintiffs will still move forward with litigation, but meanwhile, roughly 1,700 trans people in Kansas are screwed.
Gotta make sure the election deniers get their guns back
Did you know that the DOJ can restore the gun rights of a felon in the wink of an eye, just by publishing it in the Federal Register? That’s just what they did last month, when 22 lucky duckies had their federal gun rights restored, including Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman. Hoffman was indicted in Arizona state court for being a fake elector in 2020, but Trump “pardoned” Hoffman in his wave of fake pardons late last year where he pretended he had the power to pardon his dumb minions for state offenses.
Related | Worst masterminds of Trump's attempted coup get pardons
But if Trump couldn’t pardon Hoffman, at least the administration could make sure to get guns back into his hands as soon as possible, felony or no felony. You might recall that it was very important for racist, antisemitic domestic abuser Mel Gibson to get his gun rights back—so much so that the DOJ fired the sitting pardon attorney after she refused to do so.
Meanwhile, the DOJ just went to the Supreme Court to argue that users of marijuana shouldn’t have guns for … reasons. So: Trump-supporting felons, yes. Potheads, no.
