As Trump goes after law firms for representing political opponents, Trump is also targeting a judge for the crime of ruling against him.
The tendrils of fascism is tightening their grip on America. Already, the out of control maniac, Donald Trump, has gone after journalists for the crime of reporting the news when it doesn’t glorify the American king. In addition to that, the Trump administration has frozen bank accounts of non-profit organizations for the crime of fighting climate change. In addition to that, Trump is burning diplomatic bridges internationally by stabbing other nations in the back with insane tariffs. In addition to that is the push to weaponize government agencies to crack down on online criticism as well.
Even as democracy is disintegrating in America like never before, the psychotic Trump administration has only ramped up his crack down on anyone not giving him constant praise. More recently, at the Department of Justice (DOJ), Trump gave a speech in which he renewed his call on cracking down on political opponents. Apparently, that renewed push destroy all dissent in America includes destroying any law firms that had the audacity to represent his political opponents. This in an effort to ensure that anyone who has been charged with thought crimes against the president gets little to no representation in the courts.
As we are finding out today, it isn’t just law firms the Trump administration is going after. Over top of that, he is apparently threatening judges with impeachment should they do the unthinkable crime of ruling against the Trump administration. From NBC News:
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement Tuesday rebuking President Donald Trump and his allies for calling to impeach judges who have ruled against the administration.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in the statement.
Trump allies have called for various judges to be impeached for blocking administration policies in the first months of his second term.
But Trump himself raised the stakes Tuesday, when he called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg after he blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump posted.
Trump responded to Roberts’ during a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday night, saying “many people” have called for Boasberg’s impeachment.
This stems from an instance where the Trump administration defied a court order blocking him from deporting random people under the potentially racist allegation that they were criminals. Apparently, he deported them anyway despite the court ruling. From The Guardian:
Donald Trump has repeated his declaration that he would not defy a court ruling, even as controversy swirls about whether his administration has already ignored several of them following a spate of negative judgments that threaten to block his governing agenda.
Anger among the president’s supporters has been simmering against a federal judge, James Boasberg, who ordered a halt to the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants last weekend.
The deportation flights to El Salvador went ahead nevertheless, with administration officials claiming that the planes had already departed when the judge issued his order. That, in turn, triggered accusations that Trump had deliberately flouted the courts.
The latest scandal has only renewed an already worrying debate on whether or not America is in the midst of a constitutional crisis where even right wing pundits have admitted that America probably is in one. From Techdirt back in February:
When even the Wall Street Journal’s reliably pro-Trump opinion page starts sounding alarm bells about the administration’s policies, something significant has shifted. When even the “thinkers” at the most MAGA of think tanks are calling what Elon is doing in the government a true “constitutional crisis,” we’re beginning to see cracks in the snow globe of propaganda MAGA has encased themselves within.
It’s not that these institutions have suddenly discovered their conscience. Rather, they’re realizing that the destruction-for-destruction’s-sake approach they helped normalize is now threatening the very systems they assumed they could control. The mask of “policy differences” has slipped, revealing the bare face of institutional vandalism.
The responses I’ve received to recent articles about the Musk/Trump administration’s actions reveal a stark truth: for many supporters, the goal isn’t better policy or stronger institutions — it’s the satisfaction of watching their perceived opponents suffer. “Elections have consequences,” they say, wielding the phrase not as a statement about governance but as a celebration of retribution.
But it doesn’t change reality.
The MAGA response playbook has become pathetically predictable: celebrate policies not for their outcomes, but for how many (and which) people they hurt. It’s governance by spite, where “owning the libs” has replaced any pretense of actual policymaking.
The depth of this depravity became starkly visible right after the inauguration. When Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde made what should have been an unremarkable request — asking the new administration to show mercy toward the marginalized — the response revealed exactly how far things have strayed from traditional conservative values of compassion and measured governance.
Indeed, other sources are joining this growing consensus that America is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. From Slate:
The first constitutional crisis of Donald Trump’s second term is hurtling forward as the Justice Department continues to conceal information about the administration’s alleged defiance of a judicial order halting its illegal deportation policies. Over the weekend, the government flouted Judge James Boasberg’s directive to turn around airplanes carrying Venezuelan migrants en route to El Salvador. Boasberg then called a hearing on Monday to probe the disobedience—at which the DOJ stonewalled him, refusing to reveal key details about the government’s insubordination. Soon thereafter, Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare statement. “For more than two centuries,” he wrote, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Others believe that we are more heading into a constitutional crisis rather than being in one. From The New Yorker:
In its conflict with a federal judge, the Justice Department claims to be complying with his orders while provoking a constitutional crisis.
There’s been talk for weeks now of an impending constitutional crisis. The term is imprecise, but there’s broad agreement that it covers the spectacle of a President outright refusing to comply with a court order. And here we are—although the Administration asserts otherwise. Now comes an uncomfortable question: Are courts—lacking, as Alexander Hamilton observed, “influence over either the sword or the purse”—capable of doing anything much in response?
J.G.G. v. Donald J. Trump, the case before Boasberg, places the questions of judicial authority front and center. It also goes to the question of fundamental fairness. At issue is whether the government, invoking wartime powers at a moment when the country is not at war, can, on authorities’ bare assertion, with no judicial review, take individuals who have been convicted of no crime and deport them to serve hard time in the prisons of another country. The case, even before the possibility of defying court orders arose, encapsulated some of the most dangerous legal tendencies of the Trump Administration: a hyper-aggressive conception of Presidential power combined with an eagerness to stretch statutory language beyond any reasonable bounds.
Trump has been threatening for months to use the Alien Enemies Act, of 1798, to expel Venezuelans who the Administration says belong to the Tren de Aragua gang, without the bother of going through legal proceedings. The law has been invoked just three times—during the War of 1812 and the First and Second World Wars—and you don’t have to be a diehard textualist to understand that it doesn’t apply in the current circumstances: it applies only when “there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation” or “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated,” again, “by any foreign nation.”
Given how far afield Trump’s actions stray from the law, it was no surprise that Boasberg was willing to grant a temporary restraining order Saturday to keep the status quo in place. What was shocking was the Trump Administration’s willingness to so flagrantly violate his order. The Georgetown University law professor Marty Lederman, a Justice Department official during Democratic Administrations, wrote that he couldn’t recall “any historical precedent where executive branch officials have embarked on such an audacious action to anticipatorily stymie the proper functioning of a federal court—let alone to do so in the midst of a judicial hearing.”
To be clear, the role of the courts isn’t to serve the personal interests of the president. That’s not their job. It’s to “do justice, to guarantee liberty, to enhance social order, to resolve disputes, to maintain rule of law, to provide for equal protection, and to ensure due process of law. They exist so the equality of individuals and the government is reality rather than empty rhetoric.” (Not even my words. That’s NACM)
The fact that the Trump administration is actively seeking to subvert this is leading the country down a very dangerous road. After all, what good is a court system when the president can sit around picking and choosing what ruling to listen to and which to ignore? That’s the very definition of two tier justice right there where laws are basically for other people as far as Trump is concerned.
At any rate, if Trump continues to act above the law, it’s hard to visualize how civil rights of any kind can continue to exist in any functional manner. Think Trump is wrong? Off to jail you go. Have a problem with that? Tough because Trump has decided that. Are you upset that the government has taken away your property because you’re a registered Democrat? Tough because Trump is now deciding who can and cannot won their own property. I could go on with examples of what can absolutely happen is Trump is free to do things without worry of legal consequences at all.
Fights like these do matter because a lot of people have enjoyed the freedom that America has offered. It’s that very freedom that is actively being eroded by the president right now. The more things escalate, the more rights get eroded in some form or another.
