\n<\/p>\n
U<\/span>S district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump\u2019s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America.<\/p>\n Legal scholars and ex-judges note that strong court pushback has come from judges appointed by Republicans, including Trump himself, and Democrats, and signify that the administration\u2019s factual claims and expanding executive powers face stiff challenges that have slowed some extreme policies.<\/p>\n Among the toughest rulings were ones this month by Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon and Judge April Perry in Chicago. Both district judges sharply challenged Trump\u2019s plans to deploy national guard troops to deal with minimal violence that Trump had portrayed as akin to \u201cwar\u201d zones, spurring the judges to impose temporary restraining orders.<\/p>\n Immergut, whom president Trump nominated for the court in his first term, rejected Trump\u2019s depiction of Portland as \u201cwar-ravaged\u201d, and in need of saving from \u201cAntifa and other domestic terrorists\u201d concluding that the \u201cpresident\u2019s determination was simply untethered to the facts\u201d. But a court of appeals ruled on 20 October that Trump could send national guard troops to the city.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, district judge William Young in Boston issued a scathing 161-page ruling last month calling some of Trump\u2019s deportation policies illegal efforts to deport non-citizen activists at colleges in violation of their first amendment rights \u201cunder the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of antisemitism\u201d. Young was nominated by Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n Some former appeals court judges say that the district courts and courts of appeals are responding appropriately to a pattern of unlawful conduct by Trump and his top deputies.<\/p>\n \ufeff\u201cThe president and attorney general are openly contemptuous of the constitution and laws of the United States and of the federal courts, and the arguments they make to the courts mirror that personal contempt,\u201d said retired court of appeals judge J Michael Luttig. \u201cThe federal district courts and the courts of appeals well understand that and they are going to have none of it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>J Michael Luttig, former US court of appeals judge for fourth circuit, testifies before the House January 6 committee in 2022.<\/span> Photograph: Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Recent court rulings reveal a pattern of strong judicial rebukes to the Trump administration from district and appeals courts on multiple issues since Trump took office again, which the legal news and analysis site Just Security has documented.<\/p>\n A Just Security study, which was spearheaded by NYU law professor Ryan Goodman, revealed that courts\u2019 distrust of government information and representations hit over 40 cases as of 15 October versus 35 cases in mid-September. Similarly, it noted that courts\u2019 findings of \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d administrative action totaled 58 cases on 15 October versus 52 in mid-September. The study showed courts\u2019 concerns over noncompliance with judicial orders totaled over 20 cases as of 15 October up from 15 cases a month before.<\/p>\n But despite the growing number of strong lower court rulings against the administration, some may well get reversed by the supreme court given its 6-3 conservative majority, and its rulings that have markedly expanded presidential powers.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, legal scholars and ex-federal judges stress that recent district court rulings against Trump\u2019s radical policies are grounded in fact and reveal profound scepticism about a number of the administration\u2019s sweeping legal claims.<\/p>\n \u201cUS district judges have the responsibility to determine the relevant facts before applying the law. Accordingly, the credibility of a party and its counsel are immensely important,\u201d said former federal judge John Jones, who is now president of Dickinson College.<\/p>\n \u201cSimply put, the president\u2019s reputation for hyperbole that lapses into outright lies precedes him in these cases, and judges are increasingly refusing to take the administration\u2019s rationale for its actions at face value.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, Perry called the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s depiction of events in Chicago \u201csimply unreliable\u201d with a \u201clack of credibility\u201d. She noted that state and local law enforcement contradicted the case for deploying the national guard and Trump\u2019s assertion that it was a \u201cwar zone\u201d, and warned that using the guard could fuel \u201ccivil unrest\u201d.<\/p>\n Days later, the seventh circuit court of appeals upheld Perry\u2019s ruling that denied a White House request to deploy national guard troops on Chicago streets in response to a lawsuit brought by the city of Chicago and Illinois.<\/p>\n But on Friday the Trump administration asked the supreme court to pause those rulings and permit Trump to deploy troops in Illinois, boosting efforts to send the national guard into the Chicago area.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, on Monday a three-judge appeals court panel ruled 2-1 that the Trump administration can send the national guard to Portland, lifting Immergut\u2019s ruling and allowing some 200 federalized guard troops to be sent to the city to protect federal buildings.<\/p>\n Responding to the ruling, Oregon\u2019s attorney general said if the decision is allowed to stand Trump would have \u201cunilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification\u201d.<\/p>\n More broadly, scholars and other experts voice strong criticism of the administration\u2019s legal claims.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is abusing the laws that authorize domestic military deployment in a crisis, and the courts are starting to push back,\u201d said Liza Goitein, the Brennan Center\u2019s senior director of liberty and national security.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the United States, federal armed forces cannot be used to execute the law except when civilian authorities have been completely overwhelmed. As judges in Oregon and Illinois have recognized, the facts on the ground simply don\u2019t justify deployment of the military.<\/p>\n \u201cA court could reach the opposite conclusion only by extending a dangerous level of deference to the president, effectively giving him free rein to use the military as a domestic police force. That would be contrary to American principles and traditions, and it would pose a grave threat to democracy and individual liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, some recent rulings by district judges have outraged Maga world and top Trump officials, who have decried them in incendiary terms. The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Immergut\u2019s ruling \u201clegal insurrection\u201d, which some analysts worry could incite violence.<\/p>\n Trump, too, fired back at Immergut\u2019s ruling. \u201cI wasn\u2019t served well by the people who pick judges,\u201d Trump told reporters soon after the ruling, seemingly forgetting he had nominated her, and then misidentifying her sex. \u201cPortland is burning to the ground \u2026 That judge ought to be ashamed of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s attacks on Immergut and earlier dust-ups with judges who ruled against the administration were advanced this month by El Salvador\u2019s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele, who urged the Trump administration to emulate his policies and impeach \u201ccorrupt judges\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t impeach the corrupt judges, you CANNOT fix the country,\u201d Bukele tweeted, sparking multi-billionaire and Maga ally Elon Musk to retweet it as \u201cessential\u201d.<\/p>\n But legal experts say the ruling by Immergut and other district judges who have pushed back hard against administration policies are fully warranted and reasonable, given extreme moves by Trump on immigration, crime and other fronts they deem unjustified or illegal.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the strong district court response in these contexts is striking,\u201d said Columbia law professor Gillian Metzger. \u201cIt\u2019s occurring in other Trump contexts as well \u2013 for example, the administration\u2019s efforts to deny appropriated funding or target law firms \u2013 but immigration enforcement and calling out the national guard are traditional executive areas where you\u2019d expect the president to get deference.\u201d<\/p>\n Metzger said: \u201cJudges are perceiving an administration that is asserting power in novel ways and at odds with basic norms and longstanding practices \u2013 eg, employing the national guard in a partisan fashion over the objections of state and local leaders, deploying Ice officers in aggressive ways, etc \u2013 and at times violating governing statutes.\u201d<\/p>\n Other legal scholars go further.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is not rogue judges, but a rogue president. The problem is not what judges are doing but what the president is doing,\u201d said former Massachusetts judge Nancy Gertner, who now teaches law at Harvard.<\/p>\n Gertner pointed in particular to Judge Young\u2019s ruling in a deportation case involving efforts by the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to deport pro-Palestinian non-citizen students and professors who protested against Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza.<\/p>\n In his ruling, Young wrote that Trump\u2019s conduct violated his oath to \u201cpreserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States\u201d and the actions of his administration represented a \u201cfull-throated assault on the first amendment\u201d.<\/p>\n Gertner noted that the \u201ccase involved sending people to countries without due process. We gave due process to people involved with the September 11 attacks. Sending people to countries where they had no relatives, NO TIES, was a flagrant violation of law.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Trump administration has been doing is so unprecedented and so far from normal and so illegal it makes sense that judges have issued injunctions stopping them.\u201d<\/p>\n Luttig stressed: \u201cThe judges of the United States will not be threatened and intimidated by this president and this attorney general. They will continue to honor their oaths to the constitution, which means the president and attorney general can expect loss after loss after loss, at least before the nation\u2019s lower federal courts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump\u2019s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America. Legal scholars and ex-judges note that strong court pushback<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[794,2266,148,2189,1059,1092,9012,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-29532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-growing","10":"tag-judges","11":"tag-number","12":"tag-president","13":"tag-push","14":"tag-rogue","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}