Latest news with #JudgeBoasberg
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
A hidden measure in the Republican budget bill would crown Trump king
If enacted, Donald Trump's Big Ugly Bill as it emerged on Thursday from the House of Representatives would result in the largest redistribution of income and wealth in American history – from the poor and working class to the rich. Hidden within the bill is also a provision that would allow Trump to crown himself king. For months now, Trump has been trying to act like a king by ignoring court rulings against him. The supreme court has told Trump to 'facilitate' the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, a legal resident of the United States who even the Trump regime admits was erroneously sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Trump has done nothing. Lower federal courts have ordered him to stop deporting migrants without giving them a chance to know the charges against them and have the charges and evidence reviewed by a neutral judge or magistrate – the minimum of due process. Again, nothing. Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump regime from flying individuals to the prison in El Salvador without due process. Judge Boasberg has found that the Trump regime has willfully disregarded his order. Is there anything that the courts can do in response to Trump's open defiance of judges and justices? They have only one power to make their orders stick. They can hold federal officials in contempt, and enforce such contempt citations by fining or jailing them. It's a radical remedy, rarely used. But several federal judges are at their wits' end. Boasberg said that if Trump's legal team does not give the dozens of Venezuelan men sent to the Salvadoran prison a chance to legally challenge their removal, he'll begin contempt proceedings against the administration. In a separate case, the US district court judge Paula Xinis has demanded that the Trump administration explain why it is not complying with the supreme court order to 'facilitate' the release of Ábrego García. Xinis has even questioned whether the administration intends to comply with the order at all, citing a statement from homeland security chief Kristi Noem that Ábrego García 'will never be allowed to return to the United States'. According to Xinis, 'That sounds to me like an admission. That's about as clear as it can get.' So what's the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations? Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads: 'No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued … ' Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation. The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable. Its only purpose is to weaken the power of the federal courts. As Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley School of Law dean and distinguished professor of law, notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump. 'Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law … 'This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.' In other words, with this single measure, Trump will have crowned himself king. If it is enacted, no Congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas and laws. The gross unfairness of Trump's Big Ugly Bill is bad enough. It would worsen the nation's already near-record inequalities of income and wealth. But the provision inside the bill that neuters the federal courts is even worse. It would remove the last remaining constraint on Trump, and thereby effectively end American democracy. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Trump's clash with the courts is brewing into an 'all-out war'
Arresting judges. Threatening their impeachment. Routinely slamming them on social media and trying to go around them completely. President Donald Trump and his allies have led an intense pressure campaign on the judiciary four months into his administration. Both sides of the political spectrum are using the term constitutional crisis. 'It's an all-out war on the lower courts,' said former federal Judge John Jones III, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. More: 'Spaghetti against the wall?' Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies As the clash becomes a defining moment in the president's second term, conservative activists are pushing Congress to rein in federal judges and pressing Trump to intensify his fight with the courts. The Article III Project, a Trump-aligned group, arranged 164,000 phone calls, emails and social media messages to members of Congress in recent weeks urging lawmakers to back Trump in this judiciary fight. They called for impeaching Judge James Boasberg - one of the federal judges who has drawn MAGA's ire - after he ordered a temporary halt to Trump's effort to deport some immigrants. They also want lawmakers to cut the federal budget for the judiciary by $2 billion after Judge Amir Ali ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze that amount of foreign aid. The group is supporting bills introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, aimed at stopping federal district judges from issuing nationwide court orders, which have blocked some of Trump's policies. Mike Davis, a former Republican Senate aide and the Article III Project's founder and leader, said the legislation sends a message to Chief Justice John Roberts as the Supreme Court weighs taking a position on the injunctions. Issa's bill has cleared the House, while Grassley's has yet to advance. Related: Called out by Trump for how he leads the Supreme Court, John Roberts is fine keeping a low profile "It's really effective," Davis said. "When you talk about these legislative reforms it scares the hell out of the chief justice.' Pizzas have been sent anonymously to the homes of judges and their relatives, prompting judges to raise concerns about apparent intimidation tactics. In his year-end report in December, Roberts warned that the court's independence is under threat from violence. More: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: Courts' independence under threat from violence Activists on the right are adopting some of the language being employed by Trump critics about an impending constitutional crisis, but with a very different meaning: opponents say Trump threatens the Constitution's separation of powers by ignoring court rulings, while Trump supporters say judges are usurping the president's rightful executive authority. Both argue that the nation is at a perilous moment. More: Kamala Harris doesn't hold back in sharp rebuke of Trump's first 100 days ' Steve Bannon − the president's former White House chief strategist − is predicting an explosive summer of crisis with the judicial battle at the center, saying on his podcast recently that the nation is approaching "a cataclysmic' moment. Many of Trump's critics agree, but believe it's a crisis of Trump and the right's own making. "Some allies of the administration are inviting the constitutional crisis... because they want to enfeeble our judiciary and destroy our system of checks and balances," said Gregg Nunziata, an aide for Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate and now the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, a group founded by conservative legal figures from previous Republican administrations. Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive power during his first four months in office with aggressive moves that are drawing legal challenges, including shuttering whole federal agencies, mass layoffs of federal workers, firing members of independent board and taking dramatic steps to deport undocumented immigrants. He also has invoked a 1798 wartime law to more quickly whisk people out of the country. Trump's actions have sparked nearly 250 legal challenges so far. The court cases have resulted in at least 25 nationwide injunctions through late April temporarily halting Trump's actions, according to the Congressional Research Service. More: Dismantling agencies and firing workers: How Trump is redefining relations with Congress and courts Frustrated with unfavorable court decisions, the administration has taken an increasingly hostile stance to the federal bench. Trump complained in a May 11 social media post about a 'radicalized and incompetent Court System.' 'The American people resoundingly voted to enforce our immigration laws and mass deport terrorist illegal aliens," said White House spokesman Kush Desai. "Despite what activist judges have to say, the Trump administration is legally using every lever of authority granted to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to deliver on this mandate.' The clash with the courts has sparked talk of a breakdown in the constitutional order. After the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador and the administration continued to resist bringing him back, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California, declared: "The constitutional crisis is here. President Trump is disobeying lawful court orders." Bannon talked in an NPR interview about a "constitutional crisis that we're hurtling to." Trump and allies such as Davis have complained that the judges ruling against him are left wing partisans. "Once judges take off their judicial robes and enter the political arena and throw political punches, they should expect powerful political counter punches," Davis said. Yet some of the president's biggest legal setbacks have come from Republican-appointed judges, including multiple judges appointed by Trump. Judge Fernando Rodriguez of the Southern District of Texas is a Trump appointee who ruled against him on using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport certain migrants. Another Trump appointee, Judge Trevor McFadden with the D.C. District, ruled last month that the Trump administration must reinstate access to presidential events for the Associated Press news agency, which had been barred because it continued to use the term "Gulf of Mexico" instead of Gulf of America in its coverage. More: Judge lifts Trump restrictions on AP while lawsuit proceeds over 'Gulf of Mexico' Jones, who had a lifetime appointment to serve as a federal judge beginning in 2002 until he left to become president of Dickinson College in 2021, called the rhetoric directed at judges by the Trump administration "abominable... and entirely inappropriate." "It absolutely misrepresents the way the judges decide cases," he said. "And unfortunately, many people are listening to this and and they're getting a completely mistaken impression of how judges do their jobs." One of the biggest points of contention has been due process rights, which are guaranteed under the Constitution's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. They prohibit the federal and state governments from depriving any person 'of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' The same rights American citizens have to contest government actions against them in court extend to undocumented immigrants facing detention and deportation. Trump came into office promising mass deportations and has moved aggressively, including invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the targeting of certain immigrants "without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship," according to the Brennan Center for Justice. More: Trump has cracked down on immigration and the border. At what cost? Courts have balked at his tactics. In the most high-profile case, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must 'facilitate' the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongly sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The Supreme Court on May 16 also temporarily blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to more quickly deport a group migrants held in Texas, sending the case back to the appeals court to decide the merits of whether the president's use of the legislation is lawful, and if so what process should be used to remove people. The administration hasn't brought Abrego Garcia back, and Trump has expressed frustration with the judiciary's insistence on due process. He lashed out after the latest Supreme Court ruling, writing on social media that the court "is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do." Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller brought up the debate on May 9 when he said the administration is investigating suspending habeas due process rights, which only is allowed by the Constitution to preserve public safety during 'Rebellion or Invasion.' 'It's an option we're actively looking at,' Miller said. 'Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.' Conservative media figure Rogan O'Handley told USA TODAY he saw online commentary about suspending habeas corpus and began promoting it to the 2.2 million followers of his @DC_Draino X handle. He said he was dismayed by the judicial rulings against Trump's immigration agenda and seized on the idea to 'get around' the courts. 'We had to step up the intensity of our tactics,' he said. More: Trump administration floats suspending habeas corpus: What's that? O'Handley went on Bannon's podcast April 22 to promote suspending habeas. He was invited to join the White House press briefing on April 28 and asked a question about it. Two days later, on April 30, Trump was asked during a Cabinet meeting about his administration's planned response to the rash of nationwide injunctions against his deportation efforts and seemed to allude to suspending habeas. The idea – last done in Hawaii in 1941 after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor – highlights how the Trump administration is determined to push through any legal or constitutional obstacle to its deportation plans. Among Trump's biggest obstacles so far during the second term is the judiciary, which repeatedly has blocked some of his actions, calling his methods unlawful and drawing his ire. 'We need judges that are not going to be demanding trials for every single illegal immigrant," Trump told reporters recently on Air Force One. "We have millions of people that have come in here illegally, and we can't have a trial for every single person.' Immigration cases don't go before a jury, but instead are decided solely by an immigration judge. Miller has complained about a 'judicial coup' while Bannon, the podcaster and White House chief strategist during Trump's first administration, says there is a 'judicial insurrection.' The conflict has been brewing for months. Trump said March 18 on social media that a federal judge who ruled against him in an immigration case should be impeached, drawing a rare rebuke from Roberts, the chief justice of the United States and another Bush appointee. 'For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,' Roberts said in March. Tensions have only escalated. On April 25 federal authorities announced charges against a Wisconsin judge and former New Mexico judge, accusing them of hampering immigration enforcement efforts. Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan pleaded not guilty May 15. On May 22, the House passed Trump's sweeping tax legislation and included language inside the more than 1,100-page measure that could protect the Trump administration if a judge determined officials violated a court order. The language limits a judge's ability to hold someone in contempt of court if they "fail to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order." Constitutional scholars told USA TODAY the Trump administration can't suspend habeas corpus without congressional approval. 'If President Trump were to unilaterally suspend habeas corpus that's flagrantly unconstitutional,' said University of North Carolina School of Law professor Michael Gerhardt. Duke Law Professor H. Jefferson Powell, a former deputy solicitor general during Democratic President Bill Clinton's administration, said 'the standard position of the vast majority of constitutional lawyers is that Congress alone' can suspend habeas corpus. 'This is not a close call,' he said. More: Judge finds Trump administration disregarded order on Venezuelan deportations Any attempt to suspend due process rights would be a shocking move, the equivalent of a 'legal earthquake,' said Jones. Miller's comments added to the growing alarm among those concerned the Trump administration is threatening the rule of law and a constitutional crisis. Judges have reprimanded the Trump administration for not following their rulings. Boasberg found probable cause last month to hold the administration in contempt for "deliberately and gleefully" violating one of his orders. And Judge Brian Murphy with the Federal District Court in Boston ruled May 21 that the Trump administration "unquestionably" violated his order not to deport people to countries that are not their own without giving them an opportunity to contest the move. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a May 22 press briefing that the "administration has complied with all court orders," slammed Murphy's ruling and complained about "radical" judges. Murphy is "undermining our immigration system, undermining our foreign policy and our national security," Leavitt said. Jones said the administration is playing 'games with the lower courts' but the real sign of a constitutional crisis would be if the Supreme Court sets a 'bright line' that the Trump administration disregards. "We're on the verge, maybe, of that," he said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's clash with judges escalates to 'all-out war'
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Here's What Meta Argued to Fend Off Monopoly Claims in Landmark Trial
Meta rested its case on Wednesday in an antitrust trial in which the U.S. government has accused the company of illegally snuffing out nascent competition by purchasing Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta's lawyers spent roughly four days trying to convince Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the government's case, which claims that the company had overpaid for the rival apps in a 'buy or bury' strategy, was faulty. Meta mounted its defense in Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms by calling a handful of experts in economics and marketing, as well as current and former employees. They testified that the company formerly known as Facebook still faced plenty of competition and that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp had ultimately benefited those apps. Here are Meta's main arguments. Meta faces hefty competition The F.T.C.'s case claims that Meta competes only with other services that connect people with their friends and family. That makes Snap's Snapchat app the only significant rival, the government has said. But Meta argued that wasn't true: The company also competes with services like YouTube and TikTok, which are more focused on entertaining consumers, it said. And iMessage, the messaging app that comes installed on millions of Apple products, is a primary competitor to WhatsApp, Meta's lawyers said. Meta hired an expert, the University of Chicago professor John List, who installed software on the phones of 6,000 participants in an experiment that tracked how much time they spent using individual apps. Mr. List paid some of those people $4 for every hour they pared back their use of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He found those participants ended up spending more time other places, including Google Chrome and YouTube. Meta's experts also testified that when people cannot use TikTok, for reasons including an outage or ban, they turn to Meta's apps instead. Meta helped build Instagram and WhatsApp To counter the F.T.C.'s claim that Meta snuffed out potentially vital competitors when it bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion two years later, Meta argued that the company had worked to make those apps better. Meta called Brian Acton, a founder of WhatsApp who left in 2018, to testify that the app had benefited under the bigger company. Mr. Acton said that Google raised the prospect of buying WhatsApp, but that Meta was a better fit for the app, which had built a large international following by the time it was acquired in 2014. 'In my brief discussions with Mr. Zuckerberg, there was a lot more concern and alignment for user experience and communication and network effects and everything else that revolves around building a communications experience,' Mr. Acton said, mentioning Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who testified earlier in the trial. Under cross-examination by a lawyer from the F.T.C., Mr. Acton acknowledged that WhatsApp could have added features, like voice calling, whether or not it had been acquired by Meta. Nick Shortway, a director of product engineering for Meta, testified that Instagram had accelerated its development with access to new resources after its acquisition. Dennis Carlton, a professor emeritus at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, testified that Instagram had not been good at generating revenue from its service before the Meta acquisition. 'It gained a lot from Facebook's ability to monetize,' Mr. Carlton said. In a statement, Chris Sgro, a spokesman for Meta, said: 'After six weeks trying their case to undo acquisitions made over a decade ago and show that no deal is ever truly final, the only thing the F.T.C. showed was the dynamic, hypercompetitive nature of the past, present and future of the technology industry.' The F.T.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. What has the judge said? Judge Boasberg signaled this week that he was grappling with the question of what companies Meta competed with, and is focused on the largest players like YouTube and TikTok. Last week, Meta filed a motion asking Judge Boasberg for an expedited ruling, arguing that the F.T.C. did not effectively prove its case. Judge Boasberg ruled against Meta's motion on Tuesday, saying there 'would have to be a very clear failure of the evidence on the plaintiff's part for me to grant what would amount to a directed verdict, and that's not something I'm prepared to do at this juncture.'
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judges Demand Answers from ‘Stonewalling' Trump Admin Over Wrongful Deportation
Judges in multiple jurisdictions are pressing the Trump administration for answers regarding the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. ordered government lawyers to provide more information about their attempts to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S, The Washington Post reported. Abrego Garcia's March deportation to El Salvador was an 'administrative error,' a Justice Department lawyer admitted in court months ago. Yet the Maryland dad is still in the Central American country, even after a Supreme Court ruling against the government. The Trump administration has one week to hand over all 'documents memorializing, documenting, or describing the arrangements between the United States and El Salvador,' Boasberg said in his order. It was Boasberg's order that the administration flouted earlier this year when it sent planes carrying Salvadorans and Venezuelans to El Salvador. Also on Friday, a federal judge in Maryland handling a lawsuit from Abrego Garcia's family doubted whether the Trump administration was really trying to get him back. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said that the government has only provided 'a bunch of ''I don't knows'" in response to her orders requiring daily updates and other things. 'I don't want to tell you how long it took my wonderful law clerks to count up the 'I don't knows,'' Xinis said, telling government lawyers that she may issue a written warning. The government contends that any pertinent information they have constitutes 'state secrets' and would endanger national security. That claim doesn't appear to be holding up, especially since government officials have said so much about the case publicly. Xinis agreed with the plaintiff's lawyers, who said in a recent filing that the 'Government's assertion of state secrets is consistent with an effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its actions.' They had also described how, 'Over and over, the Government has stonewalled Plaintiffs by asserting unsupported privileges—primarily state secrets and deliberative process—to withhold written discovery and to instruct witnesses not to answer even basic questions." Xinis seemed shocked by what one government lawyer had to say on Friday. 'Just so I understand the government's position—that the warrantless, baseless seizure of a person off the streets of our state, country is not government misconduct?' she said. 'Okay. All right.'
Bloomberg
15-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
FTC Rests Case at Meta Monopoly Trial, Shifting Focus to Defense
The Federal Trade Commission wrapped up its case for breaking up Meta Platforms Inc. as an illegal social-media monopoly, with the company now set to lay out its defense in the ongoing antitrust trial. Meta will take the next several weeks to make its case before US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington. The company also said Thursday the government failed to prove its case, and it would file a motion asking him to rule in its favor.
