Dem
47
GOP
53
It's not exactly a secret that lawsuits brought by the Trump administration don't generally go well in court, outside of the Supreme Court. But even with that caveat, the White House has been on a very bad run lately, with judges across the land saying: "Yeah, I don't think so."
We'll start with a decision that actually came down late last week. In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the Department of Justice's demand for Maryland's voting lists, a demand based on alleged "authority" granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1965, doesn't pass muster. She dismissed the suit, based on the somewhat embarrassing finding that the administration failed to make a valid legal claim. And she dismissed with prejudice, which means the case cannot be refiled (an appeal is still possible, of course).
The Trump Administration has brought 31 such suits against blue states/purple states/Washington, DC. Of the 31 suits, 9 have been adjudicated, and thus far the White House is 0-9. That does not bode well for the other 22 suits, to say the least. And in case you are wondering. five of those nine judges, including Gallagher, are Trump appointees. So, one can hardly argue that Team Trump has been a victim of judicial partisanship. Not that Trump and acting AG Todd Blanche won't try.
And now we move on to a trio of losses that were announced yesterday. First up, and very much along the same lines as the Maryland case, the Trump administration has been trying to create a centralized database with Social Security numbers, information about voters' citizenship status, and other private data. This is a project that began, of course, with the DOGEys, and their utterly lawless data mining conducted while they ran roughshod over the government's computers. In fact, you could argue that this was the real raison d'être for DOGE, and that the completely ineffectual "cost cutting" was just a red herring to throw people off the scent.
Beyond the privacy issues involved here, there is no doubt that the purpose of the database is to stop legitimate (and disproportionately Democratic) voters from casting ballots. The League of Women Voters (and other voter-advocacy groups) certainly know this, and so filed suit. And yesterday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who sits in the District of Columbia, issued her ruling. She found that the project violates the Social Security Act, Privacy Act and Administrative Procedure Act, and said the database has to go, immediately. Maybe the Trump administration can put up a tarp around the server that houses the database, to try to hide their shame. Sooknanan, incidentally, is a Joe Biden appointee. So, Trump and acting AG Blanche will definitely blame her, and not, say, their own lack of competence.
Next up, and getting a lot of attention, is a decision out of Minnesota, from U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz. The Judge was asked to consider the subpoenas that the DoJ (somehow) secured in its pursuit of Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) and several of his allies. And he was, in a word, unimpressed. Or, if you prefer several words, here's the money passage from his ruling:
Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action—particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take—is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process
As you might guess, Schlitz quashed the subpoenas. Oh, and he's a George W. Bush appointee who clerked for Antonin Scalia and who was a mentor to Amy Coney Barrett. So again, hard to argue judicial partisanship here. Not that Trump and acting AG Todd Blanche won't try.
And the final Trump setback yesterday was courtesy of U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is a frequent thorn in the side of the administration, and who also sits in Washington, DC. The issue in this suit is actually kind of interesting, and crosses partisan lines. For many years, (some) politicians in both parties have argued that if a person is going to receive SNAP benefits, states should be able to limit those benefits to the purchase of "healthy" foods. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, whose department oversees SNAP, and who is a MAHA ally of "Health" and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., thought that was a fine idea, and so implemented it essentially unilaterally.
This may seem commonsense, at first glance, but there are some significant issues that make it not so simple. First, many Americans live in so-called "food deserts," where access to anything beyond junky food (purchased mostly at convenience stores and fast-food restaurants) is limited. As you might imagine, poorer people—the same ones who get SNAP—are most likely to live in these deserts.
Second, "healthy" is a very fungible and judgment-laden term, particularly when MAHA types are involved in making the judgments. For example, someone who is diabetic, and whose blood sugar drops, actually needs something like chocolate or hard candies—those things are not junk food, in that case. Similarly, someone affected with nausea (say, a chemotherapy patient) may need some 7-Up or ginger ale—again, those things are not junk food, in that case. On the other end of the spectrum, McDonalds once offered the "Keep Calm, Caesar On" kale salad with Asiago Caesar dressing. Which do you think is more likely to get approved as a "healthy" food: a Big Mac or a kale Caesar salad? And yet, a Big Mac has 520 calories, 1,140 mg of sodium and 31 g of fat, while the "Keep Calm, Caesar On" had 730 calories, 1,400 mg of sodium and 45 g of fat.
The point here is that it's not an easy call, one way or the other. The legal problem, meanwhile, is that the call is Congress' to make, not Rollins'. And so, Jackson struck down the new rule, and said that if Congress wants there to be limits on SNAP benefits, they can pass a new law that spells out those limits. Jackson is, like Sooknanan, a Democratic appointee (Barack Obama, in this case). And Jackson is, like Sookanan, a woman. So, you can bet they will both be targets of some Trump/Blanche vitriol.
This administration loses in court so often because its actions are so often lawless, its claims are so often meritless, and its employees are so often clueless. And though there isn't that much room for things to get worse, the Trump win rate nonetheless figures to drop even lower in the next couple of years. CNN did a deep dive and found 77 rulings in which dozens of judges appointed by presidents of both parties had unprecedentedly sharp criticism of this administration, using phrases like "retaliatory," "misleading," "irrational," "squalid" and "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."
This has been a theme of the pieces (L) has written for this site (though L is on vacation, so you're stuck with Z on the legal beat today). And the problem is that if federal judges do not trust the DoJ to play things fair, and to honor their duty as officers of the court, then those judge will take an extra-careful look at Trump administration cases, and will not give the White House the benefit of the doubt.
That is not going to make things any easier for an administration that, again, is already blessed with an abundance of lawless actions, meritless claims and clueless employees. And then, on top of that, consider that Trump has gotten increasingly more angry and unhinged, and figures to continue down that path. So, we're looking at a combination of increasingly skeptical judges AND increasingly worthless court filings. This just can't end well for the administration. After all, the Supreme Court can't rescue Trump every time.
Just in case proof of concept is needed, there were two stories yesterday about potentially dubious legal claims the administration ostensibly plans to pursue. First, U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, Jeanine Pirro has announced that anyone caught vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool will be prosecuted. Of course, that has always been true. The implication is that Pirro is specifically focused on the people allegedly responsible for the peeling blue paint and the algal bloom. Five people have been arrested, though they all deny engaging in vandalism. We'll see if Pirro is serious, or if she's just pandering to the boss. If she is serious, we'll see if she can prove her cases beyond a reasonable doubt. For our part, we doubt it.
Second, Trump himself wants Reflecting Pool justice visited upon ABC. He got on his divorced-from-reality social media platform and fired off this:
In describing the Vandalism that took place at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., ABC FAKE NEWS, one of the worst in the business, even paying me $16,000,000 for past bad and inaccurate reporting, failed to report that their close "friends," Dumocrats Obama and Biden, spent over 100 Million Dollars on the Reflecting Pool, and it never worked. In fact, it was rarely open due to leaks and "stench." They wanted to spend 300 to 400 Million Dollars, but just let it ROT. I spent approximately 16 Million Dollars, and it came out great, except for the Vandalism, which we are now fixing. It was also a much bigger job than originally envisioned, including the outer areas and sidewalks. We are preparing lawsuits against ABC for false reporting. I like their money, which will be given to the U.S. Treasury! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT
You don't need us to tell you that there's no such legal claim as "false reporting." If there was, everyone at Fox
would be on death row right now. Either Trump just wants to feel like he's punishing someone, or he really thinks ABC
will offer up another fat bribe settlement. If so, the people who own ABC have presumably learned that there is
no amount of money that will ever keep Trump off their backs, and so they are better off fighting. Further, the merger
whose skids were being greased with the original $16 million is now complete, and there's no further need for
skid-greasing. So, while Trump will undoubtedly find some lackey to file the lawsuit, if that's what he really wants to
do, he's not likely to be able to shake the network down again, and he's going to get laughed out of court if it ever
reaches that point. (Z)