Federal judges are making Trump’s lawlessness crystal clear
The evidence is overwhelming
Day after day, federal district court judges are providing a clarity that is otherwise largely missing from the political discourse – certainly from the mainstream media – about the rampant illegality and unconstitutionality of actions taken by the Trump administration.
After thorough consideration of the cases before them, in carefully reasoned opinions based on facts, these judges are regularly reaching devastating conclusions about Trump’s lawlessness.
Judicial opinions are normally fairly dry recitations of facts and law, but these are blistering and dramatic – riveting, detailed, must-read accounts of how important government decisions are being made arbitrarily and maliciously, often in defiance of the law and the constitution.
These rulings are coming from judges you’ve heard of and judges you haven’t, judges in every part of the country, young judges and old judges, even some Trump-appointed judges.
And it makes sense. Their job is to judge. They are not pundits. They have no bosses to please, no corporate culture they must adapt to, and Trump can’t fire them.
Just by looking at the facts and the law, and reaching the obvious conclusions – simply by being very clear about what is really going on -- they have become heroes of the resistance.
Dismantling a Database
Consider Washington, D.C., federal judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s recent opinion ordering the dissolution of a massive new federal voter-verification database.
Plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, had sued, arguing that the database illegally consolidated millions of Americans’ sensitive and legally protected personal information and was leading to purges of voters – and criminal investigations -- based on outdated and inaccurate data.
Judge Sooknanan’s opening paragraph was a marvel of clarity and common sense:
This case implicates two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote. In the past year, several federal agencies have joined forces to create a centralized federal database that contains the private information of United States citizens, including Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other sensitive data. But decades ago, Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank. And the record in this case shows that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections. The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification. So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable. Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information. All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.
The judge declared the system “contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law.”
Quashing Coercion
Or consider how unequivocally Minnesota’s chief federal judge Patrick J. Schiltz quashed subpoenas from the Justice Department that were demanding a broad range of records relating to immigration enforcement from officials in his state.
First, Judge Schiltz laid out the extraordinary history of animus and insults and threats directed by Trump and his administration against “sanctuary” jurisdictions in general – and Minnesota in particular. He recounted Trump’s fury when Minnesota officials filed a lawsuit challenging the extraordinary surge of federal immigration agents into the Twin Cities. He included a link to Trump’s social media post the next day promising the “GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA” that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” He linked to then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche’s social media post warning Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey that “I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary.”
The subpoenas were served less than a week later, and were followed up by a letter from then-attorney general Pam Bondi to Walz to the effect of, as she said on Fox News, “he better support President Trump, the men and women in law enforcement. Because if he doesn’t, we are.”
Judge Schiltz wrote:
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.
And he then reached the obvious conclusion: that “the subpoenas were issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”
He wrote that:
On the one hand, the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming. On the other hand, the Department has struggled-without success-to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.
And he concluded:
The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.
Ending Courthouse Arrests
Or consider the ruling by Judge P. Casey Pitts, in the Northern District of California, declaring a nationwide block on ICE’s policy of conducting arrests at immigration courthouses. He also ordered ICE to restore the 12-hour limit on detention in short-term holding facilities that it had waived last June. He wrote:
For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act. That instruction—codified in the Administrative Procedures Act—does not require an agency to make the choice that a reviewing court might deem preferable. But it demands that an agency at least provide sound reasons for following its chosen course.
And because the record before the Court demonstrates that ICE and EOIR [the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review] failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA.
He wrote that the government’s purported rationales were “unconvincing,” and that the decision to remove previous restrictions on civil arrests at immigration courthouses resulted “not from merely unreasoned decisionmaking but a complete lack of decisionmaking.”
The clarity. They lack of hedging. The truth-telling. All so admirable – and rare.
Also in the Courts
A federal judge in Maryland threw out the Department of Justice’s lawsuit demanding the state turn over its unredacted voter registration list. That brings DOJ’s record to 0-9 out of 31 such lawsuits. Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, notably rejected a recent opinion published by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel supporting the government’s argument. “This Court will not interpret the CRA [the Civil Rights Act of 1960] contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it,” she wrote.
And former judges are making themselves heard, as well. The full D.C. Circuit Court will now decide whether Judge James Boasberg can investigate possible criminal contempt by DOJ and DHS when officials sent 137 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador in apparent violation of his court order. In April, a three-judge panel including two Trump judges voted 2-1 to block his investigation. The decision to rehear the case en banc came after 174 former federal and state judges filed an amicus brief arguing that the panel ruling was intended to aid the Trump administration, “whose conduct in this case illustrates an intent to push the limits of compliance with court orders.”
And Now for the Bad News
Two conservative federal judges in Texas on Tuesday sentenced eight anti-ICE protesters to a combined 450 years in prison – a simply outrageous amount of time – apparently because, as one of the judges reportedly stated from the bench, “the state wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”
The protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4 of last year, turned violent when one protester, Benjamin Song, shot and injured a police officer. But some of the protesters who were given draconian sentences had nothing to do with the shooting.
As the Guardian reports, some of the defendants “were not involved in the planning, arrived separately at the protest, and left when guards at the facility asked them to do so.” Nonetheless, they were found guilty of riot and providing material support to terrorists and sentenced to decades in prison.
One defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not even at the protest. He was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets, that the prosecution claimed he moved so they wouldn’t incriminate his wife, who attended the protest.
Prosecutors argued the entire group was a “North Texas antifa cell” – and the judges bought it.
Meanwhile in California, a San Diego Superior Court judge sentenced nine anti-Trump protesters to up to two years in jail for their role in a brawl with Trump supporters who were holding a “patriots march” rally three days after pro-Trump mobs stormed the U.S. Capitol. Judge Daniel Goldstein said the defendants were trying to stifle Trump supporters’ First Amendment rights “for the benefit of antifa.”
Resistance Victories
The New York Times reports that “in a major turnabout,” ICE “is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright.”
That leaves four to go, including one in Surprise, Arizona, where there have been sustained protests. The Arizona Mirror reports that community activists in Surprise are so frustrated by their city council’s refusal to oppose the ICE facility that they are moving to disincorporate the city, placing it “under the control of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which activists believe will be more amenable to local calls to act against the federal plan.”
The New York Times reports: “The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.”
Alligator Alcatraz has shut down, bringing to an “ignominious close a $1.2 billion experiment that had once been hailed by Governor Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump as a model other states should pursue.” That’s from CBS News in Miami.
On MS NOW, Rachel Maddow had a great rundown on Monday of how Trump folds under pressure.
It’s All About November
The ACLU is devoting massive new resources to stop Trump and state lawmakers from interfering in the 2026 midterm elections.
“The ACLU is laser-focused on ensuring that every eligible voter can vote, that ballots are fairly counted, that elections are properly certified, and that the will of voters is respected,” the group says.
The group’s “largest ever volunteer mobilization and training program” includes the training of “10,000 volunteers across the country to monitor polling sites and protect election results in their communities.”
The group will also deploy staff and volunteers to monitor the elections in all 50 states and Washington D.C., with a special focus on six battleground states.
End Notes
From MS NOW: “Todd Blanche hit with state bar complaint backed by 101 former judges.”
From the Wall Street Journal: “ABC Launches On-Air Campaign Against FCC Investigations.”
From the New York Times: “Former NOAA Employees Revive Climate Site Shut by Trump Administration.”
From NorthJersey.com: “Woman outside Delaney Hall struck by car while waving an American flag.”
From the New Jersey Globe: “McIver asks appeals court to dismiss federal charges tied to Newark detention center confrontation.”
From the New York Times: “ICE Protester Says He Was Shackled in Hospital for Days After Agents’ Attack.”
From the New Republic: “D.C. Hit With Prank Projections Ahead of Trump’s July 4 Celebrations.”
From the D.C. Media Group: “Team Algae Trolls Trump’s Botched Paint Project At The Reflecting Pool.”
From MoveOn.org, a petition: “Helping your neighbor is not a crime, and we refuse to be bullied and intimidated into silence and fear. Drop the charges against the Minnesota 15 now!”