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What happens when Trump defies a court order? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-12
I started this on Feb.5th. I decided it was time to post it when a judge came up with an answer. It's called contempt of court. Judge McConnell came up with it almost at the end of the diary. Read the rest if you like.
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There are currently 35 lawsuits against Trump and his administration. You can keep up to date here on a litigation tracker by Just Security.
Trump has already suffered his first setback. A federal judge in Maryland has issued a nationwide injunction on Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
"I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?" asked U.S. District Judge John Coughenour.
During Trump's first term, California alone filed 123 lawsuits against the Trump Administration. They won 2/3 of them.
In a Reuter's article from June of 2020, they said that the Trump administration had lost 79 out of 85 cases regarding federal agencies on deregulatory or policy issues.
Earthjustice, an environmental group, regularly files against administrations for regulatory issues. They had won 33 out of their 40 cases.
In August of 2020, the ACLU said that they had just filed their 400th case against the Trump administration.
It's not even a guess. The number of cases that will be filed against this second Trump administration will be exponentially greater.
As of Feb.5th, current cases are:
Seven on birthright citizenship. One on sanctuary punishment. Two on immigration expedited removal. Shutdown of CPB One app. Access to lawyers for immigrants in detention. Three on reinstatement of Scedule F that allows easier firing of federal employees. Four on the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Solicitation of information from career employees. Disclosure of personal and financial records to DOGE. Fork directive for resignations. Removal of agency employees. Two on pause for grants, loans, and assistance programs. Two on housing of transgender inmates. Ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Ban on gender affirming care for individuals under the age of 19. Immigration enforcement against places of worship. This is by the Quakers. Ban on DEI initiatives. Remove all of gender ideology information on HHS websites. Two Department of Justice reviews of FBI employees were involved in the January 6th investigations.
What will the administration do this time when they lose? Will they always appeal all the way to the Supreme Court? That would be taking up a lot of the Court's time.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed 266 lawsuits against Trump's first administration and won 9 out of 10.
State Attorneys General filed 138 lawsuits against Trump.
In June 2018, the state of Oregon had filed 16 lawsuits.
And his first two weeks in office, the first time, Trump was hit with 50 lawsuits.
What about Trump's personal lawsuits? Arizona Central has 4,095 categorized.
On Wednesday the 5th, Gwynne Wicox, who had been a member of the NLRB board, filed suit against Trump, presumably for being fired without cause.
Critics are planning to sue over Trump's plans to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
With Trump's shut down of USAID, there are contractors who would be facing bankruptcy. Others will file suits against the US government for breach of contract. They'll win.
Nonprofit groups will file suit that the administration hasn't followed the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to follow correct legal procedures before making decisions.
The union representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees says that a deferred resignation proposal from the Office of Personnel and Management is a violation of the law and their collective bargaining agreement.
The CFPB can't respond to requests for information because Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said that they can't put out any external communications.
The American Foreign Service Association, another Union representing government employees said that they plan on taking legal action in the next few days over the USAID decision to recall employees.
Legal experts say that the president does not have the authority to remove a federal agency created by Congress. USAID was established first by an executive order in 1961 (John F. Kennedy), but was later enshrined in a law passed by Congress in 1998.
It looks like the federal courts are the only guardrails to keep Trump from destroying everything.
..it's critical to understand that the courts alone cannot save us from the constitutional disorder from a sidelined legislative branch over which the executive runs roughshod or of an immunized president who is not only failing to take care that the laws be faithfully executed but is the violating the laws on a near-daily basis.
The other problem is the damage that's already been done, that can never be undone, no matter what happens in the courts.
Let's look at what's just happening over at the FBI. The FBI turned over to the Justice Department 5,000 names of individuals who worked on the January 6th cases, the Trump cases, and into the October 7th Hamas attack. There are already two cases involving FBI employees. There's going to be a lot more.
The judges who handle the January 6th cases in Washington DC have let their feelings be known about the pardons given to the insurrectionist criminals by Donald Trump. The one good thing is judges can only be removed for cause. You can't just say that a judge is removable because you don't like their decisions. That's all the Trump Camp has going for themselves.
There are going to have to be multiple cases where Trump, or anyone in the Trump Administration, is shown to be breaking the law, and the press properly reports it.
It's like each reporter needs to be assigned one executive order and follow it through to its effects and logical conclusion. When reporters only go after the ones that garner the most interest, the little ones get by. Actually none of them are little. But you know what I mean.
Trump's executive order on the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship has already been blocked by a federal judge. Now we will see what happens if Trump violates a court order. The immigration gestapo have made a big thing about birthright citizenship. This should, by all rights, throw a monkey wrench in their plans.
After waiting a couple of days, it's now three judges that have countermanded Trump's defiance of the 14th Amendment on birthright citizenship. It's not stopping him.
In a post on X, JD Vance had some chilling remarks. He said that: "... judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power." "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command an attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal."
On the way to the Super Bowl in Air Force One, Huffington Post reporter S.V. Dáte ask Trump, "The vice president suggested that if the Supreme Court rules in a way that you don't like, they could just enforce it by themselves. Do you agree with that?" "I don't know what you're talking about. Neither do you. Who are you with?" Trump responded.
When Dáte told him that he was with the Huffington Post, Trump said he thought that the news organization was dead.
When posed with a question he doesn't like, or won't answer, he attacks the reporter and their news organization.
A federal judge in Rhode Island, has found that the Trump Administration is still holding funds on Feb.10th, despite an order from last month blocking the administration's pause on payments for grants and other federal programs.
In a five-page order, US District Judge John McConnell Jr wrote that the administration in several instances has continued "to improperly freeze federal funds and refuse to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds."
The ruling on February 10th was in response to a lawsuit brought by 22 states Attorneys General and the District of Columbia. McConnell ordered the the administration to "immediately restore frozen funding" and "immediately end any Federal funding pause" that affected the plaintiffs.
The judge did not believe the administration's filing that said that they had followed the Court's order "in good faith to interpret the scope of the courts [temporary restraining order] and expeditiously resume any funding that is subject to it."
"Good faith to interpret the scope." Trump is trying to say that not all funding is subject to the restraining order, when it is all of it. "Resume funding that is subject to it." Again, they're trying to get away with saying that not all funding was subject to his order when it was. Good reason for the judge to be upset.
This is how they're getting away with ignoring court orders. Claiming they tried, and it's not their fault that they failed.
In his order, Judge McConnell said the freeze was "likely unconstitutional and has caused and continued to cause irreparable harm to the vest portion of this country."
The judge specifically directed his order at restoring the funding of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, bills passed during the Biden administration.
The Trump Administration is playing legal games rather than obeying court orders. Delay, delay, delay. So we're seeing what happens when Trump refuses to obey. He uses subterfuge and ambiguous verbiage to cover the obstruction of justice.
As of February 10th, the justsecurity.org Trump litigation tracker shows a total of 49 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration. That's up from the 35 that was listed on February 5th when I first started writing this. I'm not going to relist the categories that I wrote down on the 5th.
In Chief Justice Roberts' year-end report, he quoted Justice William Rehnquist, who said in 2004, "criticism of Judges has increased in recent years, exacerbating in some respects the strain between Congress and the Federal judiciary."
Again as Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, "a natural consequence of life tenure should be the ability to benefit from informed criticism from legislators, the bar, the academy, and the public."
The problem is uninformed criticism. That leads to violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats.
Roberts goes on at length about the threats to judges in recent years. The use of the internet in order for litigants to take revenge on judges in many ways including doxing.
Public officials criticizing judges decisions as being tainted by political bias.
"The final threat to judicial Independence is defiance of judgments lawfully entered by courts of competent jurisdiction. Two of the major pillars of our Republic separation of power and judicial review create an inevitable tension between the branches of our government. Hamilton foresaw, and Chief Justice Marshall confirmed, the role of the judicial branches is to say what the law is. But judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court's decrees."
It's February 11th, and Just Security litigation tracker for Trump shows 54 cases now.
Judge McConnell said that "all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly." Quoting from a Supreme Court ruling, he said, "Persons who make private determination of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect."
Contempt of court is possible. A judge finding a person in contempt of court can order a warrant for their arrest and law enforcement must carry it out. The offender does not have to be in court at that time. That's a direct contempt of court versus an indirect contempt of court. Sheriffs would normally be the law enforcement used to arrest.
"After McConnell's order came down on Monday, the government filed a notice of appeal saying it's challenging the restraining order as well as the order granting the motion to enforce it at the federal appeals court, which is one step below the Supreme court."
JD Vance also had something to say about court orders. "And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say like Andrew Jackson did, the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it."
Trump said on February 9, "When a president can't look for fraud and waste and abuse, we don't have a country anymore. So, we're very disappointed with judges that would make such a ruling. No judge should frankly be allowed to make such a decision. It's a disgrace"
That's another one of Trump's favorite words. Disgrace. That and corrupt. The phrase "we don't have a country anymore" he used at the January 6th rally before sending his horde to attack the Capitol."
There was an entertaining conversation between Abby Phillip and Scott Jennings, on CNN, about various judges ruling against Trump.
ABBY: "Every single one of these cases deals with a discreet issue. They're all being dealt with by different judges. It's not broad swaths of policy here."
SCOTT: "It is."
ABBY: "When the court says, 'Congress appropriated this money, you must unfreeze it.' Why can't Trump comply with that?"
SCOTT: "So, you're saying that a judge should decide how and when money is spent, and not the President of the United States?"
ABBY: "Let me explain this a little more slowly."
SCOTT: "You don't have to talk to me like that. I have a position on this. If you disagree with me, we can talk about it."
ABBY: "But you're not listening, and you're making claims that are not connected to the facts."
Jennings said he totally disagreed with a judge being able to have the power to allow funding to go on while there was litigation on the issue.
"A mix of federal judges appointed by Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have blocked Trump's rollback of birthright citizenship, his executive order requiring incarcerated trans women to be transferred to male facilities, his federal funding freeze, DOGE's breaching of the Treasury Department's payment system and at least temporarily extended the deadline by which federal workers best decide whether to take the 'buyout.'"
The fight goes on.
[END]
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