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Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Contributor: Lower-court judges have no business setting the law of the land
On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Trump vs. CASA Inc. Though the case arises out of President Trump's January executive order on birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment, Thursday's oral argument had very little to do with whether everyone born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen. Instead, the argument mostly focused on a procedural legal issue that is just as important: whether lower-court federal judges possess the legitimate power to issue nationwide injunctions to bring laws or executive orders to a halt beyond their districts. There is a very straightforward answer to this question: No, they don't. And it is imperative for American constitutionalism and republican sef-governance that the justices clearly affirm that. Let's start with the text. Article III of the Constitution establishes the 'judicial Power' of the United States, which University of Chicago Law School professor Will Baude argued in a 2008 law review article 'is the power to issue binding judgments and to settle legal disputes within the court's jurisdiction.' If the federal courts can bind certain parties, the crucial question is: Who is bound by a federal court issuing an injunction? In our system of governance, it is only the named parties to a given lawsuit that can truly be bound by a lower court's judgment. As the brilliant then-Stanford Law School professor Jonathan Mitchell put it in an influential 2018 law review article, an 'injunction is nothing more than a judicially imposed non-enforcement policy' that 'forbids the named defendants to enforce the statute' — or executive order — 'while the court's order remains in place.' Fundamentally, as Samuel L. Bray observed in another significant 2017 law review article, a federal court's injunction binds only 'the defendant's conduct … with respect to the plaintiff.' If other courts in other districts face a similar case, those judges might consider their peer's decision and follow it, but they are not strictly required to do so. (For truly nationwide legal issues, the proper recourse is filing a class-action lawsuit, as authorized by Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.) One need not be a legal scholar to understand this commonsense point. Americans are a self-governing people; it is we the people, according to the Constitution's Preamble, who are sovereign in the United States. And while the judiciary serves as an important check on congressional or executive overreach in specific cases or controversies that come before it (as Article III puts it), there is no broader ability for lower-court judges to decide the law of the land by striking down a law or order for all of the American people. As President Lincoln warned in his first inaugural address: 'The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by' the judiciary, 'the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.' Simply put, the patriots of 1776 did not rebel against the tyranny of King George III only to subject themselves, many generations later, to the black-robed tyranny of today. They fought for the ability to live freely and self-govern, and to thereby control their own fates and destinies. Judicial supremacy and the concomitant misguided practice of nationwide injunctions necessarily deprive a free people of the ability to do exactly that. It is true that Chief Justice John Marshall's landmark 1803 ruling in Marbury vs. Madison established that 'it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.' But it is also true, as Marshall noted in the less frequently quoted sentence directly following that assertion: 'Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.' Note the all-important qualifier of 'apply the rule to particular cases.' Marbury is often erroneously invoked to support judicial supremacy, but the modest case- and litigant-specific judicial review that Marshall established has nothing to do with the modern judicial supremacy and nationwide injunctions that proliferate today. It is that fallacious conception of judicial supremacy that was argued Thursday at the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., one of the swing votes in CASA, is not always known for judicial modesty. On the contrary, in clumsily attempting to defend his institution's integrity, he has at times indulged in unvarnished judicial supremacist rhetoric and presided over an unjustifiable arrogation of power to what Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist No. 78, referred to as the 'least dangerous' of the three branches. If Roberts and his fellow centrist justices — namely, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — have any sense of prudence, they must join their more stalwart originalist colleagues in holding that nationwide injunctions offend the very core of our constitutional order. Such a ruling would not merely be a win for Trump; it would be a win for the Constitution and for self-governance itself. Josh Hammer's latest book is 'Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.' This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
CBC
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
U.S. and El Salvador presidents ‘thumbing their nose' at Supreme Court, says lawyer
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a judge's order that the Trump administration facilitate the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, but neither country's president seems interested in getting Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. During a visit to the White House on Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said: 'How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?" As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal spoke to Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
Chicago Tribune
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Cook County's State's Attorney Eileen O'Neil Burke's policy ignores judges' judgment
Recently, Cook County's new state's attorney, Eileen O'Neil Burke, issued a policy instructing assistant state's attorneys to object anytime a judge orders an individual to be released on electronic monitoring when the state's attorney originally requested pretrial detention. Blanket policies such as this one fail to promote public safety and undermine due process and the presumption of innocence by ignoring judges' decisions and mitigating information provided by defense attorneys. The Pretrial Fairness Act, which took effect in September 2023 and ended the use of money bond in Illinois, recognizes the foundational principle that every person is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty. Under Illinois' previous money bond system, judges made pretrial release and detention decisions in just a few minutes. Thus, judges had limited information about the allegations and how incarceration would impact the charged individual and their loved ones. The Pretrial Fairness Act changed that. As a result, these critical hearings have dramatically increased in length. Loyola University found that the median hearing now takes between 10 to 20 minutes. That means the judges have more information at their disposal and they are now able to make more informed and considered pretrial release decisions. O'Neil Burke's new policy disregards the individualized decisions of Cook County's judges about who should be released while their cases are pending and under what conditions. The policy also runs counter to years of data about the use of electronic monitoring in Cook County. The electronic monitoring program run by Pretrial Services has long monitored people facing serious cases, and research has shown that people on electronic monitoring have the same extremely low rates of re-arrest as people who are released without monitors. The Cook County state's attorney is tasked with promoting public safety in our city. That won't come from doing away with the progress that has been made to evaluate each case individually on its own merits and instead to decide from on high what is right in every single case through a blanket order. At a time when our democratic principles and institutions are under attack, it's more important than ever to stand up for bedrock constitutional rights — due process and the presumption of innocence. O'Neil Burke's policy doesn't cut it. — Erica Zunkel, clinical professor of law, University of Chicago Law School Speed cameras' virtue The Tribune Editorial Board's recent editorial 'Suburban speed cameras? Don't replicate Chicago's mistakes.' (April 7) does a great job pretending speed cameras contracts are more rife for abuse than any other government contract, while offering no constructive alternative solutions for dealing with the deadly crisis our region is facing from speeding motorists. In fact, even a cursory review of the largest bribery scandals in recent Illinois government history reveals criminals know no bounds for the government revenue streams they are willing to manipulate for their own fortune. Such scandals have tapped into government-owned or -regulated revenue sources as diverse as electricity rates (the recent ComEd bribery scandal), tax appeals (Joe Berrios' reign at the Cook County assessor's office) and municipal revenue streams diverted from good uses such as in Dolton under Mayor Tiffany Henyard. Given the wide range of government agencies and municipalities that have proved vulnerable to criminal intentions, we must unfortunately conclude, 'If there is a will, there is a way,' for bad actors and not throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to implementing penal structures that make our communities safer. Given the lifesaving outcomes speed cameras can produce, the societal benefits far outweigh any risk of criminal practice. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago analyzed traffic data from 101 speed camera zones in Chicago between 2015 and 2017 and found that the cameras reduced severe and fatal crashes by 15% and all injury crashes by 12%. Furthermore, a 2015 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that in Montgomery County, Maryland, a setting similar to suburban Cook County outside Washington, speed cameras reduced the likelihood of fatal or incapacitating injuries by 19% and of drivers going more than 10 mph over the speed limit by 59%. According to Illinois law, municipalities are required to use speed camera revenues only on public safety purposes, as well as constructing and maintaining public safety infrastructure. Therefore, what the editorial board calls the 'plaguing (of) drivers just trying to get to work, run errands or shuttle kids to activities' is actually a fair corrective action for dangerous driving behavior that also directly funds programs to make our streets and communities safer. — Jeff Swirenski, Chicago Support for curfew I believe the danger of teen takeovers in Chicago centers on the irrationality of a mob mentality. One or two leaders can stir the others up and prompt them to do things that they would not consider doing on their own. Throughout human history, mobs have resorted to horrible violence. It is a human weakness that should be guarded against. That is why I support the 8 p.m. curfew for young people downtown. — David M. Steadman, Chicago Willie Wilson's take Having lived in Chicago for the past 37 years, I have watched Willie Wilson's attention-grabbing actions of philanthropy — standing by a gas pump and handing out $100 bills — seemingly pandering to innocent unsuspecting voters in his political attempts to be Chicago's mayor. Over these last weeks, however, I have been nudged into a repentant apology by his profound take on our political crisis and a sincere and accurate Christian analysis of the problems and deliberate practical steps the individual Christian citizen can take during this holy season. As a retired Lutheran clergyman, I have been struck by the thundering silence of my own and other denominations' leaders to the flagrant attacks on humanity and the dignity merited by all of God's children. Our city and our nation and especially our faith communities must mark, listen and learn Wilson's profound statement of truths. — Douglas R. Groll, Chicago Our nation's wealth I concur with Willie Wilson's opinion regarding Holy Week ('Trump's actions are inconsistent with true meaning of Easter,' April 10). On several occasions, President Donald Trump has stated that he wants to make America wealthy again. That would seem to suggest that we need to increase the level of our wealth. The ravage of COVID-19 clearly disrupted our economy, as it did for all nations. While inflation was higher in most countries, Americans clearly felt the inflation. Thus, it is easy to forget that we are wealthier than all other countries. World Population Review provides several measures on household income. Its measure of disposable income per household ranks the U.S. as a clear No. 1 at $51,147 annually, more than $6,000 higher than No. 2 Luxembourg followed by Switzerland and Norway with levels less than $40,000. Certainly, there are numerous other ways to measure wealth, but as the whole world recovers from COVID-19, the U.S. has experienced perhaps the fastest recovery. Clearly, not every American has experienced the rapid recovery, but in the spirit of Holy Week and Easter, we should reflect on how we might aid the places in dire need of help rather than focusing on how we might be even richer than the rest of the world. — Siim Sööt, Winnetka Death with dignity I am happy to hear that Cook County Judge Patrick Murphy is 86 years old ('What being Cook County's public guardian taught me about death and dignity,' April 9). I'm not happy to hear that 'with ambivalent acceptance,' he recognizes his 'coming demise.' What's his rush? I'm 93 and am planning to be around for my great-grandson's bar mitzvah in eight short years. I appreciate the work the judge has done in his career as a guardian, and I for one agree that a prescription medication be available to those folks in a very bad time and that they be allowed to take it when the time comes. — Jerry Pollard, Northbrook Judge's theology Judge Patrick Murphy's philosophy and theology on dying conflicts with what the sisters taught him 80 or so years ago. There is a difference between withdrawing extraordinary means of life support and providing death-inducing drugs. Life remains precious in every age, including Murphy's, and suicide is not an ethically acceptable means of demise, according to centuries of Catholic teaching. Murphy should reach out to any Catholic religious sister to ask what she thinks about his new theology of assisted dying.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It Is Happening Here
In his first 2 1/2 months in office, President Donald Trump has embraced sweeping arbitrary executive power in a manner not previously seen in American history. He is circumventing Congress, ignoring the courts and using the power of the state to crush any opposition to his agenda. This is a turn away from liberal democracy and toward autocracy. This is exactly what Trump promised during his bid for a second term. After surviving impeachment and criminal indictments for fomenting an insurrection aimed at overturning a lawful election, he ran on a promise to be a 'dictator on day one' so that he could wage a domestic war of 'retribution' against what he termed the 'enemy within.' 'I am your warrior, I am your justice,' Trump said at a campaign rally in 2023. 'For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.' This turn toward autocracy is not coming from the point of a gun, as the rise of 20th century dictators would have us believe, but instead through assertions of law. 'A dictatorship [today] doesn't come with tanks in the streets, it comes with phalanxes of lawyers and compliant courts,' said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton University sociologist who has long studied the rise of autocracies around the world. 'It's all done legally, and it's all done bloodlessly.' Trump's exertions of executive power masquerade as law through edicts aimed at crushing his political opposition, eliminating opposition in civil society, removing sources of knowledge and learning that contest his power, sidelining Congress and the courts, and centralizing power in his own hands. What we are seeing at the outset of the second Trump administration is a full-scale attack on democracy, liberal principles, and the rule of law that have been enshrined in legal precedents and the Constitution in order to establish autocratic rule. While there have been significant antidemocratic and authoritarian movements in U.S. history from the Slave Power to Jim Crow to wartime repressions to McCarthyism, a peacetime assault of this scale and national scope directed from the White House has no historical analogue in this country. 'I don't think there are exact comparisons in the U.S. past,' said Aziz Huq, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the co-author of a book on the failure of constitutional democracies. 'I can't think of a moment when there's been an effort to set aside the authority of statutes, the authority of Congress, the authority of courts in quite the way that there is now.' To put it plainly: It is happening here. What is happening in America today is the same scene that has played out in various countries across the globe in the 21st century. From Hungary to Turkey to Poland to Russia to India, democracies collapse into autocracy not after a strongman seizes control of the military or through violent coups but through legal machinations that cement their control and neuter their opposition. They don't necessarily end elections or entirely eliminate their opponents. Instead, they put their thumb on the scale to ensure elections go their way and that their opponents are weak. Scheppele named this process of seizing power autocratic legalism in a 2018 paper of the same name. Steven Levitsky, the Harvard University political scientist and co-author of 'How Democracies Die,' refers to the outcome of this process, which maintains the veneer of democracy, as competitive authoritarianism. 'The government would not descend into fascism or single party dictatorship, but rather weaponize state institutions and deploy them pretty systematically to punish rivals and to protect allies, and to bully and harass much of civil society into silence or onto the political sidelines,' Levitsky said. This 21st century autocracy uses constitutions and the law against themselves and each other, seeking to eliminate existing liberalism — meaning the enshrining of individual rights in law and protections from arbitrary or unitary rule — in culture and law, and replace it with the illiberal ideas of autocratic governance and mass obedience. The most commonly cited analogue to Trump's efforts to subvert democracy in the U.S. is that of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. 'Orban and his team are all lawyers and their whole democracy into dictatorship plan happened through excruciating legality,' Schepple, who lived in Hungary for years working at the constitutional court and watched Orban's rise, said. Orban won power with a resounding electoral victory in 2010 and quickly moved to use the law to keep himself there forever. He gutted the civil service to remove anyone perceived as disloyal, cut funding for newspapers, universities and nonprofits; packed the judiciary with loyalists; gerrymandered legislative districts; seized control of the prosecutor's office and amended the constitution to centralize all power in his hands. While opposition still exists, his party has not come close to losing power since. Once securely in power, Orban took his vision and his autocracy playbook international with a bid to build ideological allies — including to the United States. In 2023, he teamed up with the Heritage Foundation, the conservative nonprofit that led the Project 2025 plan for Trump's second term, which entered into a working agreement with The Danube Institute, Orban's chief vehicle to export his illiberal ideology, according to a report by The New Republic. When Orban visited the U.S. in 2024, he spoke to a closed-door group at the Heritage Foundation. The Conservative Political Action Conference has twice hosted its events in Hungary with Orban's blessing. Whether or not this partnership directly involved Hungarian input on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 plan, Orban's influence is all over it. Project 2025, which has since been put into practice, echoed Orban's governance style by calling for removing disloyal civil servants, using state funds to bully and defund civil society actors like universities and nonprofits, and centralizing power in the executive at the expense of other branches of government or sources of power. This relationship likely helped Trump accomplish something Orban and the world's other autocrats could not: assert this agenda with lightning speed. It took Orban three years to seize control of the judiciary. Turkish President Recep Erdogan spent years in power before fully consolidating control after the enactment of 2017 constitutional changes by popular referendum. Barely two months into his second term, however, Trump is acting as though he has already secured these protections. 'This is a much more rapid and thoroughgoing weaponization of the state and deployment against critics, rivals and civil society than we see in most other cases of 21st century elected authoritarianism,' Levitsky said. The turn to autocracy can be seen across the board, as Trump has centralized power in the White House and claimed control over independent agencies. Trump has asserted direct control over the Department of Justice and all agencies that engage in investigations: In an executive order, he declared that only the president and attorney general may define matters of law within the administration, and that all agencies, including independent agencies, must take orders from the White House. Meanwhile, an executive order establishing a new form of civil service employment called Schedule Policy/Career (formerly known as Schedule F) would allow Trump to fire vast swathes of the federal civil service and replace them with loyalists. Trump has further asserted the power to fire any official he wants, even when Congress has put restrictions on that power and Supreme Court precedent has upheld those restrictions. By centralizing power over the agencies and individual employees, Trump can use the government to enact his will. That will is to extort civil society to bend to his designs, and to eliminate opposition from Democrats, law firms, universities or any other institutions inclined to challenge him. To do so, Trump creates legal pretexts ― DEI, illegal immigration, antisemitism ― that can be used as cudgels against his targets by the agencies he controls. Civil society has already shown signs of folding as law firms and universities have bent the knee to protect themselves, leaving open the possibility of a snowball effect of collapsing opposition. Three law firms so far have struck deals with the administration to either make an executive order punishing them go away, or to protect themselves ahead of time. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the first firm to reach such a deal, set the precedent when it entered into an agreement to provide $40 million in pro bono services to the administration in exchange for Trump rescinding an order punishing it. 'Once Paul, Weiss folded, now there's a model for action that can be built upon because every other firm has a signal that if you're targeted by the administration here are the things you need in order to get out of the crosshairs,' said Scott Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at UCLA School of Law. Trump also directed the Department of Justice to seek sanctions and disciplinary action against lawyers who bring 'frivolous' litigation, in this case meaning lawsuits against his administration. Most concerning is what that order labels as frivolous: It specifically calls out 'the immigration bar, and powerful Big Law pro bono practices' as engaged in 'fraud,' opening up any lawyer or law firm practicing immigration law to legal threats, blackmail and sanctions at the same time that the administration takes a harshly anti-immigrant stance. 'To me that's the real central lever that that order is using,' Cummings said. 'It's targeting the firms by disabling them from doing work based on the fact that Trump doesn't want people to represent immigrants to make legally authorized claims to remain in the United States. That's overruling the rule of law.' Universities have also acquiesced. Columbia University agreed to essentially hand over control to Trump, particularly on matters of protest policies and oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department, in exchange for him releasing $400 million in federal research grants. Harvard University signaled on Tuesday that it is also looking to make good with the administration over pretextual complaints of antisemitism on campus. The administration has already launched investigations into 60 universities on pretextual claims of antisemitism. 'These acts of taking critical resources hostage and demanding behavior that amounts to a degree of self-silencing and political sidelining, that's textbook authoritarian behavior,' Levitsky said. Trump's efforts to subvert civil society also extends to the political arena, where Democratic Party-affiliated groups, particularly those that might fund or organize his opposition, like the campaign contribution processor ActBlue and donor networks like Arabella Advisors, have come in the crosshairs. 'What we are seeing is an emboldened administration that is launching a coordinated attack going after all of the mechanisms slowing down Trump in his first administration,' said Cole Leiter, executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a liberal group organizing against Trump's targeting of civil society and his political opposition. Trump has worked to undermine institutions, questioning the nonprofit status of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which played a major role suing his first administration and exposing his self-dealing, while many of the law firms targeted by his executive orders have historically provided the legal muscle in fights for liberal causes. 'It's calculated and targeted at the pillars of progressive power,' Leiter said. On the same front, Trump has sought to consolidate control of elections in his hands. He has fired one FEC commissioner and asserted the power to dictate decisions made by the body overseeing campaign financing. He also issued an executive order that purports to change state election laws in manners that would favor the Republican Party, although he has no such power. And while all of this operates through the law, there is also the threat of extrajudicial power, aimed at individuals. Last week, Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk was surrounded by plainclothes immigration officers while walking to her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, and whisked off to a detention center in Louisiana for deportation all in under 24 hours, allegedly because she was a threat to U.S. foreign policy. Her apparent crime? She was one of four authors on an op-ed in her student paper calling on the university to back a student resolution to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Ten days earlier, the administration violated a court order to halt three flights of Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants who were sent directly into a brutal prison known for human rights violations in El Salvador. The administration claimed these were all gang members, but they were denied due process and officials provided no evidence to back up their allegations. Since then, numerous cases have emerged of likely innocent people and confirmed legal residents being sent to a foreign gulag where no detainee has ever left. The administration claims it has no responsibility to have any of these people released. While these episodes have so far targeted immigrants through the use and abuse of the legal system, they harbor a warning of violence that barely lurks under all of Trump's other threats. 'We are a stone's throw away from the jailing of citizens, including the jailing of attorneys,' said Nora Ahmed, legal director of ACLU-Louisiana. Despite Trump's fast-moving effort to convert the U.S. into an illiberal autocracy, the outcome has not been decided ― yet. There still exists, at least theoretically, a strong and powerful opposition that could stop and reverse this before it takes hold. 'The U.S. differs in that we have a much more muscular opposition than any of the countries that have faced this challenge,' Levitsky said. 'We have a well organized, united, well-financed, electorally viable opposition. We have a very big, very wealthy, very diverse private sector. We have a big civil society. We have all of the muscle to resist Trump. That muscle hasn't been flexed yet. The startling thing is how passive the resistance has been.' What would be needed is collective action across civil society institutions and the opposition Democrats. The acquiescence of law firms and universities, and the refusal of Democrats to deploy hardball tactics to slow Trump's march has fueled the sense that the autocratic turn is inevitable. But resistance has emerged in some pockets, and it's growing. 'If you look at people who have resisted these autocratic legal developments, there has been a combination of strong collective action ― with strong action by the legal profession and by the judiciary,' Cummings said, pointing to Brazil as an example where an effort to impose autocracy was defeated. Three law firms targeted by Trump ― Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block ― challenged his orders in court and won temporary restraining orders on all of them. Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber signaled that the university will stand up for itself in an interview with Bloomberg, while the school also readied itself financially by selling $320 million in taxable bonds, which could help it absorb any loss in federal grant funding. Numerous law school deans and professors have put out letters denouncing the administration's efforts to cow the legal profession. And some congressional Democrats, including Sens. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) have begun to put holds on Trump nominees to block or slow their confirmation. Trump's popularity, or lack thereof, also presents a weakness for his efforts at autocratic consolidation. Other recent autocrats had huge parliamentary majorities when they first won election, allowing them to consolidate power by passing laws, and amending or rewriting constitutions. While 2024 was Trump's strongest showing in three elections, he still only eked out a win through tight margins in crucial states, and his party did not obtain large legislative majorities. It puts his efforts at consolidation in a precarious state: Without the ability to easily push his agenda through the legislature, all of his biggest actions so far have been through executive orders or actions, and they are often clearly illegal. That has left the administration at the whim of the courts. So far, this has gone extremely poorly for Trump as his orders have been repeatedly struck down in district and appellate courts. These court rulings have pushed Republicans to attack the courts and propose impeachments of judges and laws to curtail judicial power, and the Trump administration to either defy orders or threaten to do so. But Trump and his team seem to be operating on an assumption that, unlike their foreign counterparts, they've already seized control of the Supreme Court. They appear to believe the Supreme Court's decision in the presidential immunity case that saved Trump from prosecution in 2024 contains a theory of unburdened executive power that would bless all of their actions. But that's not guaranteed. 'We will soon see if the Supreme Court is totally on board with a Trump dictatorship or whether it still thinks it has a role to play in separation of powers,' Scheppele said. And internal contradictions within Trump's policy regime may still crater his popularity or split his MAGA coalition. The first of these is one unique element of Trump's autocratic efforts: Elon Musk. There isn't a real analogue, in any of the other countries that slid into autocracy, to the way the richest man in the world and owner of a massive media platform has gone into government to tear it apart. 'There's a real contradiction between what Musk is doing and what MAGA purports to do,' Levitsky said. 'If you're going to build a populist coalition among the working class, breaking the state is probably not the way to do that.' While Musk may ultimately make peace with the nationalist MAGA faction, Trump's macroeconomic policies pose perhaps a greater contradiction for the party of Make America Wealthy Again. On Wednesday, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on almost every country in the world. The move is part of a massive macroeconomic restructuring that has left the entire U.S. economy in a paralyzed state of uncertainty, and it's not clear if it jives with an effort at autocratic consolidation. 'We haven't seen anyone try to do both of those at the same time,' Huq said. 'It's not clear how these two projects interact with each other. It's too early to tell, but if the economic project goes belly up, that has implications for the political project.' But all that is in the future. The more immediate thing that those who've watched and studied the rise of 21st century autocrats want the public to recognize, is simply what is actually happening here. 'Leaders don't do this and then walk away and say, 'Now we're going to have a normal election,'' Cummings said. Scheppele asks her students what would make them think that Trump had crossed the line into autocracy or dictator behavior. They gave a variety of answers like disobeying the Supreme Court or running for a third term, she says. But those would be too late. 'People are looking for this 'crossing the Rubicon' moment,' Scheppele said. 'When all this stuff happens under legal language, there's all kinds of ways to disguise what you're doing. So that leaves people wondering, 'When would this cross the line from what scholars call constitutional hardball into the 'oh, my God' dictator-for-life world?' And I think we're already there.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chicago lawyer appointed interim U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Illinois: sources
CHICAGO - The Trump administration has selected a Chicago lawyer to serve as the next interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, sources told FOX 32. What we know Andrew Boutros, a former federal prosecutor, co-chairs government and white-collar investigations at a Chicago law firm. He also serves as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Local Lawmakers Weigh In Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth issued a statement saying, "The White House has assured our offices that there will be no nomination for the permanent U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois until the White House Counsel's Office has consulted with both of our offices." The position remained vacant during the Biden administration due to a hold on U.S. Attorney nominees, including April Perry, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, according to the senators. "For decades, the Senate has confirmed U.S. Attorneys by voice vote or unanimous consent after consideration by the Judiciary Committee. Before the 117th Congress, the last time a roll call vote was required for a U.S. Attorney nominee was in 1975," the statement reads. The senators added that during the Biden administration, Durbin was forced to go through the process twice when a Republican colleague blocked nearly a dozen Justice Department nominees from being confirmed by voice vote. After a unanimous consent request, the senator lifted the objection, allowing the nominees to be confirmed.
