Thai Court Set to Rule If Thaksin Dodged Jail With Hospital Stay
The Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Positions will deliver its verdict at 10 a.m. on Sept. 9, following the conclusion of a weeks-long trial that ended on Wednesday, according to Thaksin's lawyer Winyat Chatmontree.
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Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Will Trump weaken the federal judiciary with specious accusations against judges?
Last week, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who shows more fealty to President Trump than to the U.S. Constitution she swore to uphold, filed a complaint against the only federal judge who has initiated contempt proceedings against the government for defying his orders. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, she alleged, had undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary by making 'improper public comments' about Trump to a group of federal judges that included Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. What is Boasberg alleged to have said? No transcript has emerged, but according to Bondi's complaint, at a March session of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Boasberg is alleged to have expressed 'a belief that the Trump Administration would 'disregard rulings of the federal courts' and trigger 'a constitutional crisis.' ' The Judicial Conference is the perfect place to air such concerns. It is the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, and twice a year about two dozen federal judges, including the Supreme Court chief justice, meet to discuss issues relevant to their work. Recently, for example, they created a task force to deal with threats of physical violence, which have heightened considerably in the Trump era. But nothing that happens in their private sessions could reasonably be construed as 'public comments.' 'The Judicial Conference is not a public setting. It's an internal governing body of the judiciary, and there is no expectation that what gets said is going to be broadcast to the world,' explained former U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who spent seven years as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, a kind of think tank for the judiciary. I reached out to Fogel because he is part of a coalition of retired federal judges — the Article III Coalition of the nonpartisan civic education group Keep Our Republic — whose goal is to defend the independence of the judiciary and promote understanding of the rule of law. Bondi's complaint accuses Boasberg of attempting to 'transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.' You know how they say that every accusation is a confession in Trump World? A mere four days after Boasberg raised his concerns to fellow federal judges, the Trump administration defied his order against the deportation of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. You probably remember that one. A plane carrying the deportees was already in the air, and despite the judge's ruling, Trump officials refused to order its return. 'Oopsie,' tweeted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele after it landed. 'Too late!' Thus began the administration's ongoing pattern of ignoring or flouting the courts in cases brought against it. It's not as if the signs were not there. 'He who saves his Country does not violate any law,' Trump wrote on social media in February, paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictatorial 19th century emperor of France. In June, Erez Reuveni, a career Department of Justice attorney who was fired when he told a Maryland judge the government had deported someone in error, provided documents to Congress that implicated Emil Bove, Trump's one-time criminal defense attorney, in efforts to violate Boasberg's order to halt the deportation of the Venezuelans. According to Reuveni's whistleblower complaint, Bove, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, said the administration should consider telling judges who order deportations halted, 'F— you.' Bove denied it. And last week, even though other Justice Department whistleblowers corroborated Reuveni's complaint, Bove was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge. 'The Trump Administration has always complied with all court orders,' wrote Bondi in her complaint against Boasberg. This is laughable. A July 21 Washington Post analysis found that Trump and his appointees have been credibly accused of flouting court rulings in a third of more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling. The cases have involved immigration, and cuts to the federal funding and the federal work force. That record suggests, according to the Post, 'widespread noncompliance with America's legal system.' Legal experts told the Post that this pattern is unprecedented and is a threat to our system of checks and balances at a moment when the executive branch is asserting 'vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution.' It's no secret that Trump harbors autocratic ambitions. He adores Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has transformed the Hungarian justice system into an instrument of his own will and killed off the country's independent media. 'It's like we're twins,' Trump said in 2019, after hosting Orbán at the White House. Trump has teased that he might try to seek an unconstitutional third term. He de-legitimizes the press. His acolytes in Congress will not restrain him. And now he has trained his sights on the independent judiciary urging punishment of judges who thwart his agenda. On social media, he has implied that Boasberg is 'a radical left lunatic,' and wrote, 'This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!' Some of Trump's lapdogs in the House immediately introduced articles of impeachment (which are likely to go nowhere). Roberts was moved to rebuke Trump: 'For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,' he said in a statement. 'The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.' Some described his words as 'stern.' I found them to be rather mild, considering the damage Trump's rhetoric inflicts on the well-being of judges. 'It's part of a longer term pattern of trying to … weaken the ability of the judiciary to put checks on executive power, ' Fogel told me. He is not among those who think we are in a constitutional crisis. Yet. 'Our Constitution has safeguards in it,' Fogel said. 'Federal judges have lifetime tenure. We are in a period of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has given the executive a lot of leeway, but I don't think it's unlimited.' I wish I shared his confidence. Bluesky: @rabcarianThreads: @rabcarian
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump's key campaign pledges. Last year, Trump said that if he returned to office, the government would either pay for IVF services or issue rules requiring insurance companies to cover treatment for it. The pledge came as Trump faced political blowback over abortion rights after his appointees to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
8 hours ago
Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to 'go to hell'
WASHINGTON -- The Senate left Washington Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump's nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and Trump posting on social media that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer can 'GO TO HELL!' Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee. 'I think they're desperately in need of change," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of Senate rules Saturday after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. "I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.' Schumer said a rules change would be a 'huge mistake," especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward. 'Donald Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing," Schumer said. The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party's executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations — and make them less bipartisan. In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump's nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch. Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead, and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration's spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues. The Senate held a rare weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and as the two parties tried to work out the final details of a deal. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told Republicans to pack it up and go home. 'Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!' Trump posted on Truth Social. 'Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.' Thune said afterward that there were 'several different times' when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end 'we didn't close it out.' It's the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn't allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump's nominees as possible. But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation. 'We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,' Schumer said.
