All posts tagged "federal government"

If the US government is a neofascist regime run by a sociopath, should we shut it down?

The U.S. government runs out of money Sept. 30.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would see that as a huge problem. I was Secretary of Labor when the government closed down, and I vowed then that I’d do everything possible to avoid a similar calamity in the future.

Under ordinary circumstances, people like you and me — who believe that government is essential for the common good — would fight like hell to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30.

But we are not in ordinary circumstances. The U.S. government has become a neofascist regime run by a sociopath.

That sociopath is using the government to punish his enemies. He’s using the government to rake in billions of dollars for himself and his family.

He’s using the government to force the leaders of every institution in our society — universities, media companies, law firms, even museums — to become fawning supplicants: pleading with him, praising him, and silencing criticism of him.

He is using the government to disappear people from our streets without due process. He is using the government to occupy our cities, overriding the wishes of mayors and governors.

He is using the government to impose arbitrary and capricious import taxes — tariffs — on American consumers. He is using the government to worsen climate change. He is using government to reject our traditional global allies and strengthen some of the worst monsters around the globe.

Keeping the U.S. government funded now is to participate in the most atrocious misuse of the power of the United States in modern times.

So I for one have decided that the best route is to shut the whole f------ thing down.

Morally, Democrats must not enable what is now occurring. Politically, they cannot remain silent in the face of such mayhem.

To keep the government funded, Senate Republicans need seven Democratic senators to join them.

Last March, when the government was about to run out of money, Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, voted to join Republicans and keep the government going. Schumer got enough of his Democratic colleagues to follow him that the funding bill passed.

As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has argued, even if you supported Schumer’s decision then, this time feels different.

By now, Trump has become full fascist.

Congressional Republicans are cowed, spineless, deferential, unwilling to make even a small effort to retain Congress’s constitutional powers.

The public is losing faith that the Democratic Party has the capacity to stand up to Trump — largely because it is in the minority in both chambers of Congress.

But this doesn’t mean Democrats must remain silent.

If they refuse to vote to join Republicans in keeping the government open, that act itself will make them louder and more articulate than they’ve been in eight months.

It will give them an opportunity to explain that they cannot in good conscience participate in what is occurring. They will have a chance to show America that they have chosen to become conscientious objectors to a government that is no longer functioning for the people of the United States but for one man.

They will be able to point out the devastating realities of Trump’s regime: its lawlessness, its corruption, its cruelty, its brutality.

They will be able argue that voting to fund this government would violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Then what?

They can then use their newfound leverage — the only leverage they’ve mustered in eight months — to demand, in return for their votes to restart the government, that their Republican compatriots give them reason to believe that the government they restart will be responsible.

It is time for Democrats to stand up to Trump. This is the time. This is their clearest opportunity.

  • Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
  • Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.

'Chump at the table': Dems can't get enough as Trump sparks new right-wing civil war

WASHINGTON — After a slow start, President Donald Trump has been ramping up the pace of judicial nominations — but it remains to be seen if his recent public breakup with the increasingly far-right Federalist Society will impact the quality of his picks.

While Senate Republicans have tried to stay out of the fray, Democrats have enjoyed watching the brewing right-wing civil war.

“I love it. It's delicious,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story.

“It's a fine sight to have those two corrupt factions warring with each other, and it puts the point on the fact that this is, in fact, a captured [Supreme] Court. Trump is just discovering that the wrong people captured it.”

‘Got what they wanted’

In late May, after Trump’s new tariff regime was blocked in federal court, the president lashed out at first-term allies who helped him transform large swaths of the federal judiciary.

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before lashing out at one of the group’s longtime leaders by name.

“But then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.”

Leo is the fundraising Svengali behind a range of right-wing groups who has become a bête noir of Democratic progressives.

Leo did not fire back at Trump — in public, at least — choosing to tell reporters he was "very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts.”

Regardless, Democrats can’t get enough.

“Listen, those are judges that Trump nominated,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Raw Story. “The whole strategy of the Federalist Society was to create a court that ruled in favor of corporations and the rich. They got what they wanted.

“If you want a conspiracy thesis that is actually true, it's how [the Federalist Society was] created 30 years ago for this purpose, basically, to ensure that we don't have government by and for the people, but by and for the powerful, and the Federal Society succeeded.”

Other Democrats agree that Trump got played.

“It's a little bit Bizarro World,” Sen. Whitehouse said, referring to the world in the Superman comics in which everything is the opposite of the same thing on Earth.

“But it's not Bizarro World if you have thought that you appointed a court that was going to do what you wanted and you've discovered that you've appointed a court that's going to do what the polluter billionaires want, and you got had in the scheme.

“You were the chump at the table. You weren't the person who was calling the shots.”

Whitehouse pointed to the libertarian-leaning Koch brothers — billionaires Charles and David Koch, the latter now deceased — and their political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

“That was real combat back then,” Whitehouse said.

But the former Rhode Island attorney general said it was evident the Koch brothers came around to Trump after he pledged to only nominate Federalist Society approved judges for lifetime appointments.

“The combat evaporated, and the Federalist Society list emerged,” Whitehouse said.

“Now it wasn't the Federalist Society list. The Federalist Society never considered a list, never approved a list, never had a list on the agenda — not a thing. But they called it a Federalist Society list to give it some cover.

“Every clue points to there having been a deal where the Koch political apparatus would back off of thrashing Trump and the Kochs would get to appoint his Supreme Court justices.

“House of Trump is beginning to figure out that they had their pants pulled down around their ankles by the House of Koch.

“It appears now that Trump has finally figured out that he was the chump in the scheme, and that his rivals, who he despised, the Kochs, actually picked his Supreme Court justices.

“They've got the 100 percent batting record at the Supreme Court for polluter interests, and he does not have a 100 percent batting record.”

‘Those who will serve him’

Republican senators have tried to avoid the rift between Trump and the Federalists altogether.

“What have you thought of this little spat between Trump and the Federalist Society?” Raw Story asked.

“Who? I don’t keep up with that — why would I keep up with that?” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said. “It’s for you guys. We got day jobs.”

The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee also shrugged off the spat.

“I don't know anything about the fight between the Federalist Society and Trump,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Raw Story.

In Trump’s first term, Senate Republicans confirmed 234 of his picks to fill vacancies on the federal bench. But after former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats confirmed 235 federal judges between 2021 and 2025, there just aren’t many vacancies left to fill.

That’s partly why Trump didn’t get his first federal judicial nominee confirmed until July 14th, just before senators left Washington for their summer recess.

Before Trump sent five more nominations to the Senate on August 12th, an Associated Press review found “roughly half” of his first 16 judicial nominees had “revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.”

While such views are in line with those of the Federalist Society, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), said Trump was deploying a new litmus test.

“Don't look for any consistency. He is just looking for those who will serve him personally,” Durbin told Raw Story.

“Occasionally the Federalist Society, which was the secret handshake of Republicans for so many years, disappoints him.”

How one Trump lackey embodies his utter contempt for the law

The Trump administration’s contempt for the law and for the people of New Jersey is on full display yet again in the new fight over control of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

With its push to keep a Trump loyalist as our state’s chief federal prosecutor, the White House is not only ignoring the law, but also tarnishing the reputation of judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents and sowing chaos in a state that’s already seeing enough chaos these days, thank you very much.

Here are the details: Alina Habba, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump, was appointed interim U.S. attorney back in March, but her 120-day appointment expires this week and Trump only just nominated her for confirmation by the U.S. Senate, so her nomination has yet to move. Federal law says the state’s federal judges can name her replacement until the Senate votes to confirm her, so on Tuesday they announced they chose Habba’s deputy, Desiree Leigh Grace.

The judges did not say why they rejected the Trump administration’s push to keep Habba in the post. I have some ideas:

Whatever the reason, federal law gives our district judges the power to choose the U.S. attorney when the president’s nominee is not confirmed. So they did, and now the Trump administration is accusing them of colluding with Democrats to punish Dear Leader.

“This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said on social media.

“The district judges in NJ just proved this was never about law — it was about politics,” said Bondi deputy Todd Blanche.

This is dangerous nonsense. Bondi and Blanche know that federal law is on the judges’ side here, but they’re taking advantage of the public’s ignorance of the law to cast the judges as enemies of the state.

I worry about how this will end. The Trump administration claimed they removed Grace, whose sole crime is that the federal judges who oversee cases in New Jersey think she’s better qualified than Habba (considering Grace has worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for nearly a decade, that’s unquestionably true). But Grace told the New Jersey Globe she intends to take over as U.S. attorney on Saturday. I can’t imagine that will sit well with all the president’s men.

If what’s happening in New York is any indication, we’re stuck with Habba. Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in New York’s northern district, John Sarcone, was not chosen to remain in the position by that district’s judges, so the president gave him a different title, and now Sarcone is still the district’s acting U.S. attorney.

Good news for Trump. Bad news for anyone interested in a government that works for anyone but him.

This part of Trump's lawlessness is most troubling of all

Rule of law. Due process. Separation of powers.

Many of us were taught that these are the core principles of our government that protect us and our democracy. Now, we’re living through dire threats to these fundamental values. Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a relentless assault on America’s judiciary and legal system — with dire consequences for people across the country.

Trump’s systematic dismantling of judicial authority isn’t a Beltway issue for Washington insiders. The American people recognize these actions for what they are: a threat to their own rights and ability to be treated fairly by the courts. Our polling of voters in battleground states demonstrated that 74% of those voters — including Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — are concerned that Trump’s actions could allow the government to violate their rights with no consequences.

And the administration’s flouting of the law has already directly threatened Americans’ basic safety: Trump’s unprecedented deployment of the military and national guard in California, against the wishes of state and local governments, escalated an already volatile situation and put civilians in danger.

It goes without saying that our courts aren’t perfect — and, indeed, as the administration’s assault on their independence demonstrates, real reforms will be needed to our judiciary and legal system in the years ahead to right the ship.

But put simply, this administration has no respect for the separation of powers — attacking judges who issue opinions contrary to Trump’s agenda and signaling a clear willingness to circumvent the rule of law altogether.

One of the earliest examples of Trump’s defiance of lawful court orders came just a few weeks after he was sworn back into office, when Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered the unfreezing of billions in federal grant money. The administration's refusal to comply meant communities nationwide lost funding for essential services, causing mass panic and confusion across the country. When the administration ignores orders to reinstate critical support for communities, American families and children suffer.

And now, Trump and his administration openly admit to ignoring the courts. For months, the Department of Justice provided excuse after excuse for why they hadn’t facilitated the Supreme Court-ordered return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father they wrongfully sent to El Salvador. Last month — though the administration continues to persecute him — Garcia was brought back to the U.S., proving that had the federal government wanted to obey the Supreme Court in April, they could have.

This creates a dangerous precedent for everyone in America: Legal protections are meaningless if the government can disregard them at will. What happens when your Social Security benefits are wrongfully denied? When your healthcare coverage is illegally terminated?

This pattern of defiance goes hand in hand with Trump and his allies’ targeting of the legal system overall.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans in Congress have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges Trump doesn’t like, and Republican leadership is advancing harmful legislation to kneecap the power of the courts. They are working to eliminate the power of the judiciary to pause Trump’s dangerous, illegal executive actions nationwide. Without this protection, your rights would depend entirely on where you live. An unconstitutional policy could be paused in California but continue harming families in Texas, Florida, and Ohio.

The administration’s shake down of our nation’s largest and most lucrative law firms similarly impacts access to justice. By punishing firms for political reasons, and then extorting them for nearly a billion dollars in legal services, Trump is trying to create a culture of fear in the legal community where few are willing to challenge government actions and all work to bolster his power.

Our judiciary or legal system overall is not perfect. Far from it. And when we’re out of this mess, work must continue to strengthen the independence and fairness of our courts.

But we need strong courts and strong lawyers more than ever at this moment. Without them, Trump and his congressional allies will have free rein to enact any and all harmful policies regardless of established law or the Constitution. And hardworking Americans who just want to care for their families and loved ones will be the ones to suffer.

But the American people are seeing right through these attempts to rig our government in favor of the rich and powerful. Since Trump’s inauguration, millions of people have participated in protests across the country.

When ordinary people are willing to take to the streets, it is time for the most powerful among us to call a spade a spade and not duck away from the full crisis facing our country.

The momentum is starting to shift: Members of Congress have begun sounding the alarm on Trump’s unprecedented attacks on judicial independence, and law firms like WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Jenner and Block are fighting back against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders.

We need more courageous action. And while it is critical that the protests and civic engagement we’ve seen across the country continue, we also need that action to come from the most powerful: lawmakers at all levels of government, law firms, corporations, and university systems.

If we value our ability to seek justice when wronged and ensure equal protection under law, we must recognize our justice system is under siege. Defending our courts isn’t only about preserving institutions — it’s about protecting our rights and our freedoms before it’s too late.

  • Maggie Joe Buchanan is the interim executive director at Demand Justice

This Supreme Court ruling may be the worst yet

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.— Dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, et al., vs. New York, et al.

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority just authorized Donald Trump’s complete dismantling of the US Department of Education. In another shadow docket ruling that lacks legal precedent, facts, or justification, the court dealt an even more serious blow to separation of powers than to public education.

The Education Department was established by federal statute in 1979, to “strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”

Congress not only created the Department by federal statute, it tasked it with specific priorities:

  • Funding kindergarten through 12th grades with over $100 billion annually (around 11 percent of all funding for such public schools)
  • Running the federal student financial aid system which awarded over $120 billion a year in student aid to over 13 million students
  • Ensuring equal access to education for poor, disabled, and disadvantaged students
  • Administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with special education services for more than 7 million students
  • Administering grants for students seeking college degrees or higher education.

Congress expressly prohibited the Secretary of Education from “abolishing organizational entities established” in the Department’s founding statute without following prescribed steps. Those steps require 90 days’ advance notice to Congress providing factual support and explanations for each of the proposed actions of abolishment. None of those statutorily-mandated steps were followed by the Trump administration.

Other presidents respected Congressional authority

Presidents have felt differently about the value and purpose of the US Department of Education, but all of them, prior to Trump, recognized that they lacked the unilateral authority to eliminate a federal department that Congress specifically created. Not only did Congress create the Department of Education, it passed education-related mandates and tasked the department with carrying them out.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan wanted to dismantle the department, and submitted a proposal to Congress that would have done just that. Reagan withdrew his plan after it garnered little support in Congress.

Trump, in contrast, appointed Linda McMahon to lead the department with a mandate to “put herself out of a job,” meaning, to eliminate the entire agency. Commencing with immediate layoffs in March, McMahon confirmed that her first reduction in force (RIF) — which cut the Education department’s staff in half — was “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” directed by the president.

McMahon’s first RIF came with employee lock outs, which made it impossible for terminated staff to hand off work to remaining staff. Like 500 tons of USAID food that Trump just ordered incinerated rather than let it feed people, all the education department work that went into those projects was simply destroyed.

At a Congressional budget hearing, when McMahon was asked if she or the department had conducted “an actual analysis” to determine what the effects of the reduction in force would be on the Department’s statutory functions, McMahon testified, simply, “No.”

Decision supports what Trump started

The Court’s decision came two weeks after states received a three-sentence email from the US Department of Education advising them that $7 billion in education funding — which was scheduled to arrive the next day — was being frozen indefinitely, without providing a reason.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says the president cannot refuse to spend funds Congress previously appropriated. But Trump claims that act is unconstitutional, and that he should have greater control over Congressional spending.

Impounded funds had been earmarked by the states to provide afterschool and summer programs so students nationwide would have somewhere to go while their parents are working, along with adult literacy classes, in-school mental health support, smaller class sizes for elementary classrooms, and services for students learning English.

Alabama’s Superintendent of Education, Eric Mackey, told ABC News that Trump’s funding block would hurt students with the greatest need, and that, “The loss of funding for those rural, poor, high poverty school districts” makes it all that much more difficult to educate poor children in those communities.

Separation of powers is becoming a quaint memory

Our constitutional order, for the last 250 years, has been that Congress “makes laws” and the President “faithfully executes them.” There is no language in the Constitution that authorizes a President to unilaterally enact, amend, or repeal statutes.

Republican justices on the Supreme Court read history selectively, as they consistently bend existing statutes to satisfy Trump’s will. The Education decision followed a similar shadow docket ruling made just one week ago in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees.

In American Federation, the Court allowed the Trump Administration to fire tens of thousands of workers at 19 federal government agencies — the bulk of the federal government — while appeals over the firings continue.

The dissent in both cases was livid. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Education decision “indefensible” because it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” Aside from supporting public education in general, the gist of the dissent was that allowing an executive to unilaterally dissolve a federal department expressly created by Congress poses a grave threat to the separation of powers by diminishing the role of Congress.

SCOTUS approves Trump’s disregard for the law

Aside from the fatal blow to the separation of powers, the Republican majority on the high court has rewarded a thuggish president for his continuing pattern of breaking the law first and seeking permission later.

Congress expressly barred the Secretary of Education from altering functions assigned to the Department by statute, and barred her from abolishing organizational entities established by law.

But Secretary McMahon, directed by the president, did it anyway.

As the dissent put it, “The Executive has seized for itself the power to repeal federal law by way of mass terminations, in direct contravention of the Take Care Clause and our Constitution’s separation of powers.”

The Court’s majority has now altered our Constitutional makeup, conferring on Trump the power to repeal laws by firing all employees necessary to carry them out. Instead of taking care that the nation’s laws are “faithfully executed,” the court’s majority has told Trump he can simply discard them.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.





I sacrificed profit to pursue law for the common good … for this?

My first 10 years out of law school were spent as a corporate lawyer. The money was great but the intellectual challenge was marginal, and intrinsic satisfaction was non-existent.

I was new to Chicago, so, like a lot of young lawyers, I hung out with other young lawyers. Most of us, myself included, had borrowed at least $100,000 to get through law school, on top of whatever we owed for undergrad.

I was a nicely compensated hired gun but my job, at its core, was to move profits back and forth between corporate entities. Practicing corporate law didn’t serve justice, humanity, or animals abused at home or abroad. It didn’t solve for X, unless X began and ended with money.

Leaving profit for principle

Disillusioned, I was jealous of my poor friends who worked in public interest law. They were struggling to pay obscene rents but when they talked about their cases, their eyes projected an unquestionable sense of purpose. Win or lose in their cheap suits and goodwill shoes, unlike me, they were making a difference.

When I switched from corporate law to public interest litigation, everyone warned that the learning curve would be high — corporate skills wouldn’t transfer to the courtroom. By switching fields entirely, after 10 years, I’d be starting all over again.

They were right. Mastering the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, in tandem with the Federal Rules of Evidence, is a serious undertaking. They are dense and byzantine. But I was motivated in a way I’d never been before. I replaced money with a passion for making a difference. And for a while, I felt like I did.

Drudgery of civil litigation

Most federal cases don’t get in front of a jury. Most don’t go to trial at all. The vast majority of federal cases presenting constitutional claims are resolved, after two, three, or four years of discovery, at the summary judgement phase.

Summary judgment, the lifeblood of any federal trial lawyer, is basically a trial on the papers. It follows years of discovery complete with motions to compel the other side to produce something other than boxes of worthless crap.

In summary judgment, attorneys on all sides of the case file statements of fact, distilling thousands of pages of evidence into short, numbered facts. Each salient fact must be supported by a pinpoint cite, directing the judge (and opposing counsel) to the exact line number, of the exact page, of the exact exhibit where a witness said what the lawyer claims he said.

Disillusionment hits hard

I presented the preceding overview of one aspect of federal trial practice as a snapshot of how much work goes into federal pleadings that, in turn, drive federal rulings. The breadth of work that goes into federal rulings adds to the depth of disillusionment when those rulings are ignored.

Watching republicans on the high court give a felon president immunity from criminal laws, then gut federal courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions to stop him from doing his worst, makes me feel like an idiot. I spent too many years in the courts to watch casually as the Supreme Court dismantles centuries of precedent in overtly partisan service to a lawless president.

When I see the Roberts Court issue partisan, emergency docket rulings like American Federation, that completely disregard the work and input of the federal district and appellate courts, it feels personal. I feel dissonance and displacement. Is this the same federal judiciary I practice under?

SCOTUS belittles federal judiciary

In American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump, giving Trump unprecedented authority to dismantle the federal government without Congress’s input, the Supreme Court ignored the work of both the district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The district court issued a 55-page analysis of the standard factors for preliminary injunctive relief, and concluded that Trump’s mass federal layoffs should be enjoined until the merits of the arguments could be heard. The district court found that Trump’s proposed changes to the federal government, by restructuring or closing agencies created by Congress, appeared to “intentionally or negligently flout the tasks Congress” specifically assigned to the agencies Trump seeks to dismantle.

After reviewing 69 sworn declarations and 1,400 pages of evidence, the district court found, as affirmed by the Ninth Circuit, that if they did not pause Trump’s restructuring, the egg could not later be unscrambled — after mass firings, federal agencies would “not be able to do what Congress directed them to do.”

Partisan court serves Trump by disregarding fact

Last week, the Supreme Court disregarded those factual findings and ruled on its shadow docket that the Trump administration was “likely to succeed on its argument that the (layoffs) are lawful,” without presenting any facts or law in support.

As noted by the dissent, longstanding precedent directs that “factual findings are reviewable only for clear error,” “with a serious thumb on the scale” supporting the district court’s evaluation of evidence.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a)(6) similarly directs that a trial court’s factual findings “must not be set aside unless clearly erroneous.”

For Trump, apparently, those rules don’t apply.

In Dobbs, the immunity decision, the Colorado 14th Amendment case, and multiple decisions issued in Trump’s favor despite the strength of precedent against him, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority supported its outcome-driven decisions with distorted and cherry picked legal precedent.

That was bad enough. But in American Federation, the court simply announced its desired outcome without offering any support at all. It’s a growing, pernicious habit as the court decides Trump cases on the shadow docket, where reasons don’t have to be given.

After 20 years on the federal trial bar, I now consider the law to be largely illusory, its pursuit a bit naive. It’s hard to imagine that any trial lawyer could continue to respect the law under a high court that so flagrantly disregards it.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Trump is a wrecking ball but it's the Supreme Court that lets him swing

As the death toll rises in Texas, Trump has done everything but tap dance naked to deflect the media from discussing climate change (hoax), or how his staff cuts to the National Weather Service (600 in May) likely affected flood warnings.

So it is understandable that in the clickbait environment of today’s media, the significance of Tuesday’s American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump decision was largely upstaged.

In American Federation, the Supreme Court reversed both the district court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and granted Trump’s request to dramatically restructure the federal government even while cases challenging it are pending.

Although agency-specific plans were not before the Court, American Federation allows Trump’s unilateral destruction of federal agencies to continue without congressional input. In yet another no-reasons-given shadow docket ruling, the high court allowed Trump to trash congressional mandates through executive fiat.

SCOTUS defends another executive order that endangers lives

In February, Trump issued Executive Order No. 14210 to “eliminate” major components of the federal government. The rub is that most of the components Trump seeks to eliminate were established through acts of Congress.

In its underlying decision, the district court wrote a 51-page opinion detailing just a few of Trump’s restructuring plans, which included:

  • Cutting 93 percent of employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
  • Firing half the workforce at the Department of Energy
  • Firing more than half the workforce of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association
  • Cutting 70 percent of the staff at the Department of Labor Headquarters
  • Cutting 83,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs

Trump’s team argued this was an appropriate exercise of “existing executive-branch authority to make staffing decisions,” rather than a fundamental takedown of the federal government. But any American who watched DOGE take a chainsaw to federal agencies without bothering to learn what those agencies did, knows better.

Lives lost won’t be limited to weather calamities

Well before the Texas floods showed the danger of blindly dismantling federal services, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals affirmed the district court’s injunction to preliminarily stop Trump’s wrecking ball until the cases challenging it could be heard on the merits. Issuing its own 35-page ruling, the Ninth Circuit identified other risks of dismantling the federal government, including:

  • Proliferating food-borne disease
  • Perpetuating hazardous environmental conditions
  • Eviscerating disaster loan services for local businesses
  • Drastically reducing the provision of healthcare and other services to veterans

They might have added that Trump is deliberately accelerating climate change; spreading preventable diseases like black lung, polio, and measles; and allowing real terrorist operations to bypass national security while Kristi Noem stages fake terror photo ops for Trump TV.

Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court that the few concerns it listed were enough to pause the mass firings, at least temporarily.

These concerns are of no moment to Trump, who ordered his cabinet to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.” As Project 2025 prescribes, Trump will now fire more career civil servants with deep subject matter expertise. He will either replace them with know-nothing loyalists, or farm out their agencies to wealthy donors champing at the bit to privatize the federal government.

High court protects Trump’s lawlessness — again

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, lifting the stay and disregarding the extensive findings of fact developed by the District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was the wrong decision at the wrong moment. Considering the horrors that Trump has already unleashed, that was an understatement.

Under Stephen Miller’s direction, military tanks and masked ICE agents are swarming parks, courts, and schools. They are raiding homes, farms, and places of employment and worship. Operating as Trump’s Gestapo, masked agents are grabbing brown people out of their beds, off commercial farms and off soccer fields, leaving screaming children and spouses behind. Despite having committed no crimes, these people are headed for inhumane detention centers and likely deportation to foreign gulags.

Republicans on the high court are well aware of these abuses, but have begun greenlighting them nonetheless. Last week, they ended nationwide injunctions, the main tool in federal district courts’ quivers to stop a rogue president, despite allowing them under Joe Biden. The week before that, they approved Trump’s plan to deport migrants to gulags in war-torn countries, to hell with the Eighth Amendment.

Query what role will be left for Congress, or the lower courts, when SCOTUS and Trump have finished their collusive handiwork.

High court shares Trump’s contempt for federal judiciary

Disregarding the evidence and decisions of both the district and appellate courts, the Supreme Court wholly disregarded 69 sworn declarations and 1,400 pages of evidence in the underlying case. They also disregarded long-standing precedent directing that stays pending appeal should only be granted in “extraordinary circumstances.”

Without offering any review at all of the case from the district court, the majority summarily wrote that, “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful,” without explaining how or why Trump’s power grab order would survive a merits review.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred only because Trump’s executive order directs agencies to plan reductions in force “consistent with applicable law,” entitling Trump the benefit of the doubt until he breaks the law. Again.

As Jackson’s dissent put it, “What one person (or President) might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment.”

The bottom line for Jackson was that Trump’s wrecking ball is aimed at agencies and policy choices Congress made, without congressional consent. She allows that while presidents have the authority to manage the executive branch, “our system does not allow the President to re-write laws on his own under the guise of that authority.”

American Federation will deliver long-term consequences, as yet unseen, for Congress and the federal judiciary. Although MAGA Republicans groveling before Trump divested themselves of power willingly, the rest of Congress did not. Arrogating legislative powers for himself through 170 largely lawless orders to date, Trump will diminish the role of Congress until it is nearly meaningless.

The federal judiciary has also been weakened. Query how federal district and appellate court judges must feel, knowing that their life’s work — their trained distillations of facts in evidence and analyses of binding precedent — are now worthless exercises awaiting shadow docket reversal by a partisan and demonstrably corrupt high court.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free

'Leave Elon alone!' MAGA rebels against Trump as it takes sides in feud

Truth Social users replied in droves with support for Elon Musk after Donald Trump posted a threat to take away the Tesla founder's government subsidies.

According to the Washington Post, Musk's companies have received $38 billion from the federal government over the past 20 years.

In their ongoing war of words Thursday, Trump posted, "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!"

Replies to Trump's post ranged from "Elon is a great man!" to "Not a good look Trump."

The account of @realohiogirl, who describes themselves as #ULTRAMAGA, posted, "What is wrong with you??? Please stop."

"I’m not sure you’re gonna see this. I really hope and pray that you do! The country needs you and Elon so if you two could just work out your differences that would be fantastic," wrote @kitkat1963.

I am disappointed in the blowup between you and Elon. Together you were an unbeatable force. Apart, you are both weakened -something that makes our enemies very happy," wrote @sfs.

The account of WeLoveTrumpWLT told their 18,000 followers, "Sorry but bad take."

@tommykids11 posted, "ITS STARTING TO SOUND LIKE A CAT FIGHT...LEAVE ELON ALONE."

@AmandaHardin1776 wrote, "High school didn’t even have this much drama. Bread and circuses are lit in 2025."

"Need to leave the ego at the doors the well being of the nation is bigger and more important than any one or two man!" wrote @ckeathley1. "THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN WAR OF WORDS BETWEEN THE TWO JUST TWO LOSERS! THE SUBJECT OF EACH OTHER SHOULD BE A NO COMMENT BY BOTH AND A PRIVATE PHONE CALL BETWEEN THE TWO SHOULD BE DONE IF ANYTHING NEEDS SAID BETWEEN THEM!!"

Earlier Thursday, Musk live tweeted his responses to Trump's press conference comments about how "disappointed" he was that Musk spoke out against the "excess pork" in the "big beautiful bill" that passed the House.

‘Maybe she’s hangry?’ Top Dem tells of shock as MTG loses it at 'crazy hearing'

WASHINGTON — As Elon Musk hits the exit from the Trump administration, the top Democrat on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) DOGE — Delivering Government Efficiency — Subcommittee is laughing off the billionaire as a “fraud” and “poser” who squandered his shot to streamline government.

“Turned out that literally everything Elon Musk said on TV was just bullsh—t,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), the ranking member on the DOGE panel, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview at the U.S. Capitol.

Stansbury also divulged secrets about her GOP counterpart, including a recent moment during a particularly tempestuous hearing when she felt the need to slide Greene a snack.

“I tried to slip her some Cheez-Its because I was like, ‘Maybe she's hangry?’” Stansbury said.

While she’s only on her third term in the House, Stansbury knows the ways of Washington from her time as a staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Barack Obama.

At OMB, Stransbury worked for the United States Digital Service — the federal technology unit Musk and President Donald Trump upended and renamed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

After a federal judge granted Musk and his secretive DOGE team access to sensitive Treasury Department data this week, Stansbury is sounding the alarm, warning that as Musk leaves town, he’s likely taking Americans’ personal data with him.

Raw Story’s interview with Stansbury has been edited for length and clarity.

RS: How has it been for you sitting across from MTG on the DOGE subcommittee?

MS: “Uneventful. Well, I say that … She's actually fairly collegial to me. When I first decided to take this on, I went and met with her in her office with the committee staff, and it was southern hospitality. She was very nice, very warm and we agreed that we’d tried to do bipartisan stuff, and then it devolved into madness very quickly.

“We had a crazy hearing at the start of May where they were attacking trans athletes, and she was just so out of control. Later — that was the week she announced she wasn't running for Senate — I knew something was wrong with her that day, because she was acting so stressed out.”

RS: Interesting.

MS: “Even halfway through that hearing, I tried to slip her some Cheez-Its because I was like, ‘Maybe she's hangry?’ I'm like, ‘I don't know why she's acting this way.’

“The thing that's interesting about her, too, that I noticed, is that the media is so obsessed with her, it's like she could sneeze and it'd be front page news. Anything she does generates news.”

RS: Sometimes I let her walk past without interviewing her, just so she feels what it’s like to not have the spotlight on her.

MS: “I think the biggest takeaway is that I was skeptical that that committee was going to actually do real stuff in the beginning, and it devolved and unwound so catastrophically, so quickly. That last hearing on trans athletes was such a disaster for them. I still see Heritage Foundation affiliates trying to plant stories in the media and I’m like, ‘You guys f—d up. Sorry. You can't redeem yourselves.’”

RS: GOP leaders gave her the subcommittee because they wanted to placate her, right?

MS: “That I don't know … I could not tell you the inner workings of the Republican conference. It's an interesting ecosystem. In fact, right after the committee got created, I had a Republican member come to me on the floor and say, ‘Did you know that Marjorie didn't put any women on the committee?’ And I'm like, ‘Okay.’ There's a lot of dysfunction there.”

RS: Is it all men on there?

MS: “It is. I mean, reportedly, [House Oversight Committee Chair James] Comer told me this, she wanted the best members so she handpicked the seven men she wanted …

“At the beginning, I think they honestly all bought the hype of Elon Musk. I think they thought, like, ‘Oh, this guy is a tech guy, and he's so smart and he made all this money so he must be super smart.’ And the dude's just a bullsh—ter. He had no idea what he was doing. And also, apparently he's an as—hole too, so he's very difficult to work with. And then he started doing stuff that pissed off the cabinet secretaries and apparently all the West Wing people didn't like him, but he's a major donor so they couldn't push him out.”

RS: Do you communicate with him? MTG told me she communicates with him some.

MS: “The only communication I ever had from him is that he tweeted at me relentlessly for 24 hours, and I literally said to him on national television, ‘If you'd like to engage, you can come into our committee under oath.’”

RS: Yeah?

MS: “He never did.”

RS: Do you think Musk stepping out of the Trump White House and pulling back from political spending will change the dynamics of the DOGE subcommittee?

MS: “I've been around this place a long time, from when I was a staffer. People will parse their words, and what I heard Musk say was that he was going to do less donations. Does that mean he's gonna do less political activity? I don't think so. I think he stole that data, and I think he's gonna use it for his own fundraising.”

RS: Americans' private data?

MS: “Yes. Why wouldn't he? This is the thing, it's all indefensible. They're drunk on power right now. But this is one of their cardinal sins because it will come back and bite them, and it's going to bite them hard because they overplayed their hand.”

RS: With Musk on his way out, is that going to change the dynamics? Have you felt his presence in the subcommittee or is it MTG’s show?

MS: “The very first hearing was, if you accept their premise of the case, a legitimate hearing. They were like, ‘Let's look at improper payments in the Medicaid system.’ But now it's, like, completely decoupled, right? What they're doing to Medicaid has nothing to do with what they claimed they were gonna do, and it turned out that literally everything Elon Musk said on TV was just bullsh—t.”

RS: Does that make you feel like a pawn? Or are you and the other five Democrats — three men, two women — doing important work?

MS: “I'm a former OMB employee. I knew [Musk] was a fraud from the second I laid eyes on him. When he stood up that fake-a— Twitter account to show his receipts, I was like, ‘Do you know how to use Excel?’ For real, because that's how we put together budget spreadsheets and none of this adds up.

“I'm genuinely interested in making the government work better. My background is in the sciences and I'm really into big data. I actually helped stand up the U.S. digital program that DOGE took over. I was interested from its inception, and I helped set it up when I was at OMB.”

RS: Does it hurt to see DOGE upend it and claim it?

MS: “No. Again, I think they were so stupid — and by they, I would pin this on just the administration in general. Had they just spent six to nine months putting together a concrete plan, identifying what they wanted to end, how they wanted to restructure these agencies, and then brought it to Congress, they have a majority, they could have done it legally. But it was sloppy, stupid, uncoordinated and ineffective.”

RS: Musk admitted with a shrug on live TV they accidentally erased Ebola research funding!

MS: “Elon Musk's fall from grace publicly with the Republicans was after he tried to buy that Wisconsin judicial race. I think their bravado was that they could break everything and then buy their way out of it and then people start marching in the streets and they're like, ‘Oh, oops, I guess we broke it.’

Elon Musk cheese hatElon Musk wears a cheese hat as he holds a rally in support of a state Supreme Court candidate in Green Bay, Wisconsin. REUTERS/Vincent Alban

“I think the big challenge will be what gets rebuilt and how. For me, again, because I am interested in the modernization of government coordination, I think that they've been so norm-breaking and destroyed so much, whereas the bureaucracy is incremental, right? Like, Congress passes a law to fix a problem. Then they pass another law to fix a different problem, and so the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts.

“It's just a bunch of random sh— that got tied together, and so does it create a new space to kind of wholesale rethink things in a modern way? I actually think it does, if we can ever find the time away from this insanity to do that.”

RS: That's where bringing AI and tech and streamlining government would come in?

MS: “Yes!”

RS: But it doesn't seem like they've done that — or have they, just in the background?

MS: “No. This is where I'm like, ‘They're idiots. Literally.’ I saw an interview where Musk was going on and on and on about how his DOGE people were at the Internal Revenue Service and, ‘They didn't even have the search button in a standardized location.’ It was like April 5, and he was like, ‘We couldn't even get an IT person to move a button on the web page.’

“I'm like, ‘No sh–t Sherlock, it's tax season. You think they're gonna f—k with the federal IRS website as people are filing their taxes?’ That's just dumb.”

RS: So it was just that common sense was lacking?

MS: “Yeah. That's his idea of government efficiency. And so the thing to me that makes Elon Musk such a poser, he comes out of the tech bro world and those guys, what do they do? They figure out how to monetize a customer experience through mostly an app interface, right?”

RS: Yeah?

MS: “That's what he's selling. He's selling you an experience. And so, yeah, they could have just come in, which is actually what OMB’s digital service department was designed to do, to deal with the user interface. But he thought he was gonna transform it the way he did Tesla, right? Total overhaul and then put all the pieces back together, because he didn't understand the law and how the government worked and its vital functions.”

RS: Right.

MS: “I think if he had stuck to user interfaces and improving government websites, he probably could have built some cool stuff. But he did not. Instead, he broke everything, and then became the most unpopular modern political figure and got his feelings hurt.”

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

This odious monster left a trail of misery — but I'll thank him for one thing

The New York Times is out with one of those stories that has to be read to be believed, so I did just that, three times, to spare you the pain.

This one, published Wednesday night, has to do with the grotesque Elon Musk’s sudden dissatisfaction with his work to break his piggybank, the United States Government. But instead of really zeroing in on the damage he and his gang of post-pubescent drooler-nerds have done since infiltrating that government, and doing God knows what with our private information, while smashing to pieces infrastructure designed to pay our benefits and keep us safe, the Times thought it important we hear about some alleged feud that has developed between Musk and the only person who is more disgusting than him on the entire planet: the orange, wrinkly America-attacking Trump.

Here’s how this story, that has five bylines on top of it, gets out of the box:

Elon Musk took a swipe at President Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation, saying it would add to the national deficit. He complained to administration officials about a lucrative deal that went to a rival company to build an artificial-intelligence data center in the Middle East. And he has yet to make good on a $100 million pledge to Trump’s political operation.

Mr. Musk, who once called himself the president’s “first buddy,” is now operating with some distance from Mr. Trump as he says he is ending his government work to spend more time on his companies. Mr. Musk remains on good terms with Mr. Trump, according to White House officials. But he has also made it clear that he is disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he upended the federal bureaucracy, raising questions about the strength of the alliance between the president and the world’s richest man.

All that under this headline: “A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington.”

I mean, ho-ly-hell. A disillusioned Musk?!

Was there not just ONE of the 20 editors who assuredly looked at this monstrosity, that gave even a single thought to the lives that have been wrecked since Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn't a department at all and more like a hit squad — were given free rein and a metaphorical chainsaw to wreck OUR government and the lives of our public servants inside it??

How can this part be so casually ignored?

And because those lives were ruined, petty things like our drinking water, air traffic control, social security and Medicare benefits, and disaster relief are now in a jeopardy, but poor, poor “Mr. Musk” is the victim at the center of this tragedy:

“The cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his efforts, particularly on Capitol Hill, according to people familiar with his efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.”

That’s a nice way of saying The Gang Who Couldn’t Loot Straight shot first and asked questions later, and now careers, lives and countless families’ well-being are dead because of it.

But I'll let a high-ranking official at the Social Security Administration I spoke to this morning tell it. She is working around the clock and is both angry and terrified:

“The devastation ... It is not just the loss of trust from the American public as DOGE data mines all of their information. It is not just the increased call volume of concern from the American public, crushing our ability to maintain services. The panic that has been induced has created more work and worse services as staff simply cannot keep up. The workforce is demoralized as they do not know if they have a future. That worry does not inspire an ‘all hands on deck’ attitude that would carry any agency through a high volume, efficiencies gained period.

I have literally picked up federal agents off the floor, crying. I have reminded them of their duty to serve the American public and inspired them to continue for one day more … reminding them that they are here to serve the American public and focus on the work at hand.

My component lost 95% of the workforce. The agency still expects 100% of work to be done. They have provided us no new automation tools to theoretically replace the hundreds of workers. We keep telling the agency it is impossible; the leadership they installed is deaf and tells us we are not efficient. The exhaustion of trying to keep the remaining workforce upright and functioning is starting to affect overall service. The error rates are climbing. It feels intentional so that DOGE can tell us how we are not good enough and should be replaced. But it is all due to sabotage.”

So hold your ears and cover your eyes while I say what so urgently needs saying on behalf of her, America, and the public servants whose lives have been ruined: “F––k that guy.”

If you are really interested in why our government isn’t as efficient as maybe we’d all like it to be, consider they’ve spent the better part of the past four decades operating under constant attack from mostly the Republican Party. They have dealt with hiring freezes and something called “continuing resolutions” (CR) that essentially fund the government at ridiculously short increments of approximately 90 days, because God forbid Congress does its damn job and passes an annual budget that they are mandating to do by law.

I wonder how Musk and all these fat-cat billionaire ripoff artists would do if they were told they were only able to plan out for 90 days at their companies. Actually, I don’t wonder at all, because they’d all fail on Day 91. There would be no hiring, no capital funding, no investment, no advertising dollars, no nothing.

The CR is code for dysfunction and has absolutely nothing to do with the public servants who are forced to work in that environment, and everything to with the people who caused it.

Expecting the government to run smoothly under these toxic conditions is foolhardy, but you almost never hear a single person in Congress say it, because it’s a helluva lot easier politically, and far more convenient to just blame the people inside the government for their epic failures.

After all, that chickensh–t tactic has worked beautifully since the days of Ronald Reagan, who once said on behalf of the billionaires who funded his campaign and pointed him around the room: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.’"

And if there was a God, his house would have blown down the minute those words dripped out of his fat, lying mouth.

With the exception of the Department of Defense, which is drowning in dollars and manpower, federal government staffing has stayed mostly steady the past two decades or so.

We’ve also heard a lot about all the money Musk palmed the greasy Trump to help him get elected. Most estimates have that in the $250 million range, but there’s never enough time spent on the astounding $38 billion — make that BILLION — in contracts, loans and subsidies Musk has received from US, the taxpayers, tied mostly to his failing SpaceX and Tesla ventures.

Musk bitching about the government is like the guy who walks away from the table after a third helping of lobster and champagne, and then spends the night whining to everybody about his heartburn.

It’s disgusting and a blinking billboard for all that is really wrong with America, which has absolutely nothing to do with our government and the public servants who staff it, and everything to do with these billionaires who pillage it and then stuff their bottomless pockets with our money.

So now Musk is allegedly going back to where he came from, because hell is always open for business.

From the Times’ story:

Last month, Mr. Musk told Tesla investors and analysts that he would cut his time on government matters to “a day or two per week,” and since then, he has made a concerted effort to show that he is re-engaged at his companies.

“Back to spending 24/7 at work,” Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, posted on X on Saturday. “I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla.”

Sure, pal, that’ll do it.

Before you allegedly go, though, I do want to thank you for all your work here in Wisconsin helping to get a top-notch liberal judge elected to our Supreme Court last month by trying to buy our votes, while making a complete a––hole out of yourself.

The $25 million you dumped in my state will go a long way toward making sure everybody, and not just odious people like yourself, are represented here.

At least you aren’t completely good for nothing.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

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