Our federal judges continue to make us proud. Just in time for Super Bowl, they may be on the bench (see what I did there?) but they are most certainly in the game.
With 85 executive actions so far, Trump, the President for the Billionaires, is papering the judiciary with a lot of ripe issues which quickly result in requests for relief from individuals with standing (in many cases, that’s nearly all of us … talk about a class action).
In the past 72 hours, we saw federal judges take action! THANK YOU, JUDGES!
- A federal judge in Maryland issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that halts the Executive Order to terminate birthright citizenship for children of immigrants with temporary or undocumented status. By the way, birthright citizenship is not an Obama-era add. It’s literally in the Constitution .. check this out:
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution grants citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US, and guarantees equal protection under the law.
- A second federal judge in Washington State issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on the same Executive Order, adding in his opinion, “The Constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games.”
- A third federal judge in Massachusetts issued an order delaying the Dumpy Musky (could this catch on?) “Fork in the Road” proposition (aka, in “Friends” parlance, “The One Where the Unethical Narcissists Don’t Keep their Word”) to buy out the entire federal government workforce because … their plan is to make the federal government fail as fast as you can say “Cybertrucks are ugly!”
- A FOURTH federal judge in D.C. temporarily blocked the Trump/Musk scheme to put at least 2,200 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave. In a nod towards efficiency, and maybe because it’s Friday and even judges need a weekend, the order (from the bench, meaning it’s not yet written because time is of essence when it comes to peoples’ livelihoods and actual lives) also limited the “accelerated removal of people from their countries.” Fun fact! Judge Nichols was nominated by Trump. Sorry, Mr. President. Life is complicated.
What’s Next?
As I type this, I am reading about brand new executive orders to “review” gun control policies and establish a “faith” office. Let me speak directly about both.
First, it is rich that Trump plans to review the many protections the Biden Administration ushered in by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun safety law passed in 30 years (read about its progress here, while the website still exists). After all, just this week, he signed the “Keep Men out of Women’s Sports” law to somehow protect women from the 10 Transgender kids who play among the 500,000 student athletes in the NCAA. Yet, with an average of 76 women shot and killed by an intimate partner every single month, Trump’s obsession with relaxing reasonable gun safety measures is patently anti-women.
Second, a White House Faith Office is OK, I guess, if the idea is to guarantee religious liberty, rather than entangle church and state. Maybe Trump will find Jesus and become a human. However, if the faith office is more like a white Christian office, expect whatever moves they make to draw challenges on, you know, Constitutional grounds.
More soon, I am sure. If you like reading these posts, please pass along badfederaljudge to your friends. So far, I am pleased and proud to report that the judges are anything but bad actors.
Let’s keep an eye on the judiciary and hope it stays that way.
RESIST.