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New York Post
26-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Courts are infected with ‘injunctivitis' — and tempting Trump's defiance
Federal judges are working overtime to defy President Trump. How much thought have they given to what happens if he defies them in turn? So far, Trump has been obeying the court orders coming from mostly leftist federal district judges, even when those orders are deeply questionable. Advertisement Law professor Jonathan Turley calls it 'injunctivitis,' while Harvard Law's Adrian Vermeule says that district courts' nationwide restraining orders 'are basically an automatic judicial veto on all new policy.' 'Whatever form of government that is, let's please not call it 'democracy,' ' Vermeule notes. A new standing order in Maryland automatically blocks the deportation of any illegal alien whenever their lawyer files a petition — before a judge even reviews it. Advertisement District Judge Allison Burroughs in Massachusetts blocked Trump's funding ban on Harvard almost the moment papers were filed. 'Did she even read it, or was the rubber stamp already loaded?' one observer asked. Clearly, a significant portion of the federal judiciary is hostile to Trump's policies and is happy to thwart them in any way it can. Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho last week denounced his colleagues for acting like short-order cooks for the left. Advertisement 'We should admit that this is special treatment being afforded to certain favored litigants . . . and we should stop pretending that Lady Justice is blindfolded,' Ho wrote. It all raises a question: What if Trump simply ignores these rulings? He wouldn't be the first president to do so. In the famous case of Marbury vs. Madison, President Thomas Jefferson announced in advance that he wouldn't comply with a Supreme Court decision favoring Marbury — leading to some fancy legal footwork by Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote an opinion that carefully avoided forcing Jefferson's hand. Advertisement President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court's decision in favor of the Cherokee tribe in Worcester vs. Georgia, reportedly remarking 'John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.' Abraham Lincoln essentially disregarded the court's Dred Scott ruling, arguing that an unelected body couldn't legitimately make policy for an entire nation based on a single case. As he observed in his first inaugural address, 'if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.' One can only imagine what Honest Abe would have said about district court judges. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters President Franklin D. Roosevelt, like Jefferson before him, announced in advance of the Supreme Court's ruling in a 1942 case involving Nazi saboteurs that he would not obey an order in their favor. But in recent decades, presidential defiance of a Supreme Court opinion has become almost unthinkable. The high court's prestige has been far greater than it was earlier in US history, and no president has enjoyed the political whip hand held by FDR. Advertisement The press, too, has generally been very supportive of the Supreme Court — especially when Republicans hold the presidency. But what about now? The judiciary's prestige has been badly damaged, in part because of Democrats' attacks after rulings on abortion, affirmative action and gun control went against their preferences. Advertisement And the power of the press has much declined: Despite the legacy media's unrelenting anti-Trump negativity, the number of Americans who think the country is 'on the right track' is at a near-record high, according to RealClearPolitics. If the media can't move that needle, how much can it hurt Trump over a disputed legal question — especially when large majorities of the public support the president on spending cuts and deportations, the issues drawing the fiercest judicial opposition? In the past, defying the courts would have looked like an abandonment of the rule of law. But given the courts' behavior, that's not the argument it used to be. Leftists have spent the past several decades attacking and breaking down institutions. Now that they need the public to venerate those institutions, they don't have much to work with. Advertisement Will the Supreme Court impose some order on the lower courts — or will we find out how far a president can go in ignoring the judiciary? And if it's the latter, is that so bad? The Framers set up a system of separated branches in which, as Lincoln noted, power and responsibility were compartmentalized. Advertisement The judiciary's claim to be the final authority on all constitutional questions is comparatively new, and poorly founded. As Vermeule says, such a system isn't anything like democracy — and is nothing like what the Framers envisioned. Previously, the balance worked because the judiciary had self-control and understood the dangers of overreach. Now, like so many of our institutions, it's been addled and corrupted by Trump-hatred — and one way or another, a corrective is in order. Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the blog.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
However Scared You Are, You Are Not Scared Enough
WASHINGTON — However scared you might be for our democracy, you are not scared enough. The president of the United States, from the moment he regained the office, has been step-by-step following the autocrat's playbook. He has gone after universities for not obeying his decrees. He has extorted law firms for having on staff, or just once-upon-a-time having had on staff, people who crossed him. He has targeted for prosecution former aides who challenged him. He has arrested a local judge for not helping him round up migrants for deportation. He has attacked the free press for not bending to his will. On his very first day in office, he released from prison hundreds of domestic terrorists, effectively a personal militia, who assaulted police officers in his name. And now, not 100 days into his term, he has done what so many democracy advocates have feared he would eventually do, something that no president has dared try in the more than two centuries since Marbury v. Madison's precedent that the judiciary would be the ultimate authority on what is and what is not legal: He is straight-up defying the United States Supreme Court. And — here is the truly terrifying part — he is getting away with it. No one is getting fined. No one is going to jail. In fact, much of America doesn't even realize it's happening. The case at hand is nominally about a migrant who came to this country illegally but who for several years now had been raising a family in Maryland and training to be a sheet metal worker. But in reality it is about whether anyone or any institution has any check on Donald Trump's ability to claim near limitless power over all our lives simply by declaring a national security 'emergency.' For three years, Trump and his apologist echo chamber repeated, over and over, that the flood of migrants coming over the southern border without authorization constituted an 'invasion.' Of course, it was no such thing. However much a person chooses to hate illegal immigration, whether based on a strict, rules-are-rules belief system or a pragmatic concern for the effect on border communities or even straight-up racism, the migrants coming here these past several years did not represent an invading army, regardless of how frequently Stephen Miller and his allies tossed around the phrase 'military-aged men.' The overwhelming majority of migrants come to this country for the same reason all of our ancestors came here: To make a better life for themselves and their children. For generations now, those entering from Mexico have picked our vegetables, made the beds and cleaned the toilets in our hotels, and laid shingles on our roofs under a scorching summer sun. In short, they've been doing the work that native-born Americans have been unwilling do to do. To contrast that against an actual invasion, check out what's happening in Eastern Europe right now. Notice that the Russians aren't trying to get jobs and make new lives in Ukraine. They're trying to kill the people who already live there and steal their land. It would have been one thing for Trump to drop the 'invasion' talk after he won. Of course, though, he did not. In executive order after executive order, public statement after public statement, Trump has cited the presence of migrants in the country illegally as an 'emergency' to justify sweeping powers that allow him to round up people and ship them to a foreign prison where torture is routine where they will remain, possibly forever. And that's not the only emergency. There's an energy 'emergency' that allows Trump to trample environmental laws to bring about an infinite amount of oil-drilling. There's an economic 'emergency' that lets him impose tariffs on whatever countries' imports he wants, notwithstanding the Constitution that specifically grants the power of taxation to Congress. The dangers in those emergency authorities, though, pale before the ones given to a U.S. president facing a literal invasion, which is why the confrontation between Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court over purported members of criminal gangs has such high stakes. The justices, finally, appear to be standing up to Trump's autocratic tendencies, both in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's alleged membership in the El Salvador-based MS-13 as well as the hundreds of migrants accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. After Trump and his Department of Justice ignored the Supreme Court in the case of Abrego Garcia — claiming that its order to 'facilitate' his return to the United States does not actually mean what it says — the justices flatly forbade Trump from shipping any more Venezuelans to the El Salvador torture prison until further notice. The big question, so big, in fact, that the future of our democracy may well be riding on the answer, is what happens if and when the high court codifies its previous ruling and in more explicit language orders Trump to bring Abrego Garcia back? Or declares that he cannot use the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act when the nation is not actually at war? Maybe Trump backs down and does as he is told. But if he doesn't? Perhaps it hasn't occurred to many, maybe even most, Americans, that the Chief Justice of the United States commands no army, can summon no police force. Nor, for that matter, does Congress. They, and all of us, are dependent on Donald Trump and the police and military under his control to honor the Constitution and the rule of law. If he can declare, by fiat, that MS-13 and Tren de Aragua are not mere criminal gangs engaging in violence, theft and extortion but are instead 'terrorists' and 'invaders' that justify his use of extraordinary and extrajudicial powers, why would he limit himself there? What's to stop him from declaring that those who protest against him are agents of a foreign power and need to be rounded up and imprisoned? What prevents him from declaring that news media are 'enemies of the people' and jailing them, as well? And what about all those disloyal judges who are trying to prevent him from 'saving our country' — shouldn't they be sent to El Salvador's torture prison, too? Yes, absolutely, this sounds alarmist, because we have a normalcy bias in this country. Nothing this bad has ever happened here, and therefore it cannot. And it is this failure of imagination, the same failure that refused to foresee Jan. 6 before Trump had unleashed his armed mob on the Capitol, that is again endangering the republic. 'If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?' These words were written in an opinion in the days after the high court ordered Trump to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's return and with the Department of Justice still stonewalling. Their author is lifelong conservative Harvie Wilkinson, 41 years on the federal appellate court bench after his appointment there by Ronald Reagan. He concluded with a paragraph that was nothing short of chilling: 'We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the executive branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.' Harvie Wilkinson is clearly scared for the republic. You should be, too.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lawmakers explore ways to weaken state judges, upend landmark case law
The Brief Montana lawmakers are pushing to limit courts' authority to decide constitutionality. Kansas legislators want to change how state Supreme Court justices are selected. Oklahoma and other states are considering limiting judicial deference to government agencies. TOPEKA, Kansas - In several Republican-led state legislatures, lawmakers are advancing measures to curb judicial authority, marking a growing power struggle between the courts and elected officials. What's next Proposals include limiting courts' ability to determine constitutionality, changing how judges are selected, and reducing judicial deference to government agencies. While efforts to rein in the judiciary are not new, experts note that this latest wave comes as President Donald Trump faces multiple legal challenges, with his administration arguing that courts are overstepping their role through judicial activism. What we know A Montana legislative committee has advanced a bill that challenges the landmark 1803 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison, which established judicial review—the courts' ability to decide whether laws are constitutional. The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Lee Deming, claims that no single branch of government has the exclusive authority to determine constitutionality. It follows a series of Montana court rulings striking down GOP-backed laws, including restrictions on abortion access and a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Similar legislation is being considered in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, according to Plural, a legislative tracking service. What we don't know It remains unclear whether these bills will pass or if they will withstand legal challenges. While many proposals to curb judicial authority have been introduced over the years, most fail to gain traction, said William Raftery, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts. The backstory Republican leaders in Kansas are reviving efforts to change how state Supreme Court justices are selected, citing frustration with rulings on public school funding, the death penalty, and abortion rights. Currently, Kansas uses a merit-based system where a commission controlled by lawyers selects nominees for the governor to choose from. GOP lawmakers want to return to direct elections, a system Kansas used before 1960 and still followed in 22 states. If lawmakers approve the change, voters would need to approve a constitutional amendment to implement it. Dig deeper In Oklahoma, a proposed bill would limit judges' ability to defer to government agencies when interpreting laws, a move that echoes a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that sought to curb administrative overreach. At least 20 states have already adopted similar laws or court rulings, according to Ballotpedia. Meanwhile, in Missouri, House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins (R) proposed a bill aimed at removing a circuit court judge whose rulings he opposed. The measure, which would reduce the number of judges in a particular judicial circuit from four to three, was seen as a direct move against Judge Cotton Walker, who had issued key rulings on marijuana legalization and abortion rights ballot measures. Perkins later put the bill on hold, citing concerns over the circuit's case backlog, though he reiterated his displeasure with Judge Walker's rulings. The Source This report is based on Associated Press reporting by Geoff Mulvihill and John Hanna, analysis from the National Center for State Courts, and legislative tracking data from Plural and Ballotpedia. Details on specific state bills were sourced from Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri legislative records. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
Boston Globe
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Republican lawmakers look for ways to weaken state judges
William Raftery, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts, said the battle between branches of state government for power dates to the earliest years of the U.S. and that lawmakers often make proposals aimed at weakening judges. Most of them aren't adopted. Advertisement He said it won't be clear whether the efforts are getting more traction until most states' legislative sessions wrap up in a few months. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Here's a look at the measures: Who can decide what's constitutional? In 1803 the U.S. Supreme Court established a precedent in the landmark case Marbury v. Madison that courts can find laws unconstitutional. A Montana legislative committee has voted to reject that concept. It advanced a measure that says the idea that courts alone have the power to decide what laws are constitutional is 'a myth' and does not accurately reflect the 1803 ruling. Instead, the GOP-sponsored bill asserts that 'no single branch has exclusive power to bind its decisions on another branch of government.' A vote in the full House is the next step. The same measure passed the Senate but failed in the House two years ago. The push comes after Montana court rulings that Republican lawmakers didn't like. A district judge last year blocked enforcement of three laws to restrict abortion access and the state Supreme Court kept a law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors on hold. Rep. Lee Deming, the sponsor of the resolution, said he's not responding to any particular rulings. An analysis of legislation by the bill-tracking service Plural shows Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia have similar legislation this year. Advertisement Kansas considers changing how Supreme Court is selected In Kansas, GOP leaders have long been frustrated with state Supreme Court rulings that forced them to spend more on public schools, overturned death sentences and protected abortion rights. They're renewing a push to change how justices are selected. The governor now chooses a justice from three nominees put forth by a commission controlled by lawyers. Voters get a say every six years on whether the justice can continue serving. Senate President Ty Masterson said he and others want to cut the influence of lawyers and have voters choose justices, as they did in Kansas before 1960, and as 22 other states do. If lawmakers approve the idea, it would go before voters. Fred Logan, a lawyer and former Kansas Republican Party chair, said during a legislative hearing Tuesday that shifting to elections will make raising money for a campaign the key skill for potential justices, instead of their legal knowledge and experience. Who can decide if a regulation is legal? An Oklahoma bill would tell judges not to defer to government agencies' interpretation of laws if the statutes themselves are not crystal clear. That effort would tell judges how to do their jobs while at the same time taking power away from the executive branch. The concept echoes a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that supporters, including conservatives and business groups, said will stem overreach by agencies. At least 20 states have adopted a similar stance through court rulings, laws and a constitutional amendment in Florida, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia. A committee has advanced the Oklahoma bill to the full Senate. A Missouri lawmaker introduced a bill to oust a judge but pulled back A Missouri legislative leader proposed a bill designed to oust a circuit court judge whose rulings he didn't like, but has since decided against the move. Advertisement House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins, a Republican, said his bill to reduce the number of judges in a mid-Missouri circuit from four to three was aimed at pushing Judge Cotton Walker off the bench. Some of Walker's rulings have paved the way for a marijuana legalization ballot question to go before voters and another that forced a rewrite of the state's description of an abortion rights ballot measure. Perkins told The Associated Press this week that the legislation is on hold because the circuit has so many cases on its docket that it doesn't make sense to cut a judgeship. 'With that being said, I will reiterate I'm not happy with Judge Walker's rulings,' Perkins said, 'but that's a matter for the voters of Cole County to take care of.' Walker would be on the ballot next year if he seeks reelection. Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press reporter David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this article.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Hagerstown's Ebenezer AME Church to celebrate 200 years
HAGERSTOWN, Md. () — The Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Hagerstown is set to celebrate 200 years, and the congregation has much to build on for the future. The celebration takes on special significance as it takes place during Black History Month. The Rev. Donald L. Marbury has been senior pastor at the church for the past eight years but soon faces his mandatory retirement at age 75. 'This church is full of the most loving people,' said Marbury. 'Now we have our issues as every congregation does, as every human being does, but they care for one another and they care for this community, more so than I've seen anywhere else.' Congresswoman April McClain Delaney concerned about impact of Medicaid cuts in western Maryland Patricia Strawther has been a member of the church since she was a young child. 'I grew up in my church,' Strawther said. 'It's family. My family came to this church, it's meant everything, you know? It's our family.' Gary Graves has been a member for 25 years. 'I think the main thing is the people who are in the church, they care for each other and support each other,' said Graves. Assistant Pastor Robert Lee Burnett was Hagerstown's first Black police officer, hired in 1969. He is attuned to the challenges of Ebenezer A.M.E. being situated in Hagerstown's historic Jonathan Street neighborhood. 'We still stand,' said Burnett. 'We're still here. Like the Rock of Ebenezer, we're still here.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
