{"id":38335,"date":"2025-02-10T17:52:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38335"},"modified":"2025-02-10T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T02:54:09","slug":"the-memo-trump-allies-ramp-up-attacks-on-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38335","title":{"rendered":"The Memo: Trump, allies ramp up attacks on courts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monday brought another legal setback for President Trump\u2002<\/u><\/a>and his administration \u2014 and there is every indication it will add more fuel to the fire of MAGA grievances against the judiciary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue was federal spending and the new president\u2019s desire to freeze huge swathes of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. District Judge John McConnell complained that the administration had, in effect, ignored an earlier order<\/u><\/a> from him to unfreeze grants and other tranches of funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initial order, made at the end of January, had held that the Trump administration could not \u201cpause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate\u201d funding right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Monday\u2019s ruling, McConnell hit Trump and his allies for trying to flout his authority with \u201csweeping\u201d funding pauses that he said \u201cviolate the plain text\u201d of his previous order. He insisted that the administration must restore the funding right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Connell\u2019s ruling is one detail on a much bigger canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The courts have emerged as the path of most resistance to Trump\u2019s aggressive agenda. And the result has been unsuppressed fury from the president and his allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday, en route to the Super Bowl, Trump took aim at judges who had slowed his moves, such as U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who curbed access to the Treasury Department\u2019s payment system for the quasi-department Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, using similar phrasing to his infamous speech on the Ellipse before the Capitol Riot of Jan. 6, 2021, contended that if the judiciary stopped what Trump characterized as a search for fraud and waste, it would mean \u201cwe don\u2019t have a country anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president also contended that \u201cno judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision\u201d and insisted that doing so was \u201ca disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously, Musk himself had responded to a critical post about Engelmayer\u2019s ruling from conservative commentator Glenn Beck by alleging that this was a case of \u201ca corrupt judge protecting corruption.\u201d Musk added that Engelmayer should immediately be impeached<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impeachment is currently the only way to remove a judge, a situation that also meets with Musk\u2019s displeasure. In a separate social media post, he proposed that \u201cthe worst 1 percent of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year. This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vice President Vance has also joined the pile-on<\/u><\/a> against purported judicial overreach \u2014 or, as critics would see it, helped the president \u201cwork the refs\u201d in pursuit of his agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a social media post on Sunday morning, Vance wrote that \u201cif a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that\u2019s also illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJudges,\u201d Vance concluded, \u201caren\u2019t allowed to control the executive\u2019s legitimate power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His argument left an obvious loose end \u2014 the question of what constitutes legitimate, or illegitimate, use of executive power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a question on which the courts rule with great frequency. Indeed, during former President Biden\u2019s tenure in the White House, it was a power that Republicans encouraged the courts to use repeatedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last November, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent out a press release celebrating the filing of his 100th lawsuit against \u201cthe Biden-Harris administration,\u201d a legal blizzard that Paxton\u2019s office characterized as \u201cdemonstrating the extent of the federal government\u2019s abuses of power under the current leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, the anger from the Trump side right now is especially pointed because of how many initiatives the courts have paused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s attempt to do away with<\/u><\/a> the idea of birthright citizenship, the proposed buyout<\/u><\/a> of federal workers, the funding issue adjudicated by Engelmayer and the hollowing out of USAID have all been halted \u2014 though perhaps only briefly \u2014 by the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times reported Sunday that \u201cmore than 40 lawsuits\u201d had been filed in recent days by state attorneys general and others seeking to put the brakes on Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Democrats and other Trump critics have sought to shore up the courts against Team Trump\u2019s verbal assaults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pete Buttigieg, who served as Transportation secretary under Biden, wrote on social media that \u201ceven the greatest country, if it loses the rule of law, will not have much left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) welcomed the ruling constraining DOGE from access to the Treasury Department systems by writing Sunday that she was \u201cproud\u201d of the Democratic attorneys general \u201cfor stepping up and defending Americans\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warren added, \u201cWe are not powerless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, one of the reasons there is such a pitched battle over the courts is because much of the rest of the opposition to the president is in disarray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats are in the minority in both the House and the Senate and are still reeling from former Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s loss in last November\u2019s election. Party leaders are further disoriented by shifts to the right among key blocs, including young and nonwhite voters, and at odds over how to move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressive activists, at least so far, have been unable to replicate the energy \u2014 or the crowds \u2014 that they brought out into the streets as Trump began his first term in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are broader cultural shifts that also leave liberals uneasy, including the number of tech titans who are making nice with Trump, a sense that some media outlets are being pressured by their owners to go easy on the president and a growing corporate wariness about appearing overly \u201cwoke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the moment, it looks as if the courts are the last ditch for the Trump resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that also explains why the president and his most fervent supporters are so eager to bring them to heel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday brought another legal setback for President Trump\u2002and his administration \u2014 and there is every indication it will add more fuel to the fire of MAGA grievances against the judiciary. The issue was federal spending and the new president\u2019s desire to freeze huge swathes of it. U.S. District Judge John McConnell complained that the administration had, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9492,1226,1723,1230],"class_list":["post-38335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-ally","tag-attack","tag-court","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38337,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38335\/revisions\/38337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}