Tag: O

Posted on

Team Trump Responds to the Midnight Ruling

Version 1.0.0

I made a mistake. Amidst all the chaos of the previous weekend, I thought that the Trump Administration had not responded to the Supreme Court’s midnight ruling, and to the dissent to that ruling by Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas. 

In fact, the Solicitor General did file a brief, to which the ACLU responded. 

It is common ground that, on Friday night, the ACLU sounded the alarm, got the justices out of bed, told them that the Trump Administration had put a bunch of immigrants on buses, that the buses were headed to the airport, where a plane was headed for El Salvador, and that seven of the nine justices believed the ACLU and issued the Midnight Order.

The main issue, for purposes of the weekend, was whether the ACLU was just throwing sand in the Court’s eye, or whether the Administration really was trying to pull a fast one, tying the courts up in the niceties of their own procedures while a bunch of immigrants were headed to the gulag. 

Now, as I said, the Solicitor General filed a 15-page weekend brief. And what, pray tell, did the Solicitor General say about the main issue?

He said nothing whatsoever about the main issue. And that is because there was nothing he could say, without either lying through his teeth or expressing open contempt for the Supreme Court.

Ladies and gentlemen, when you are compelled to file a brief that says nothing at all about the key issue then you are indeed having a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day. 

Part of the Solicitor General’s problem was that the Fake News Media had video of the immigrants on the buses – which passed by the exit to the Abilene, Texas, airport, turned around, and delivered the prisoners back to their Texas prison!

Unlike some in the Administration, the Solicitor General has enough sense to know that “who’re you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” is not an argument you should make to the Supreme Court.

And Meanwhile, What of Mango Mussolini?

His Most High Excellency has addressed the issue—but only by saying that he’s very frustrated. See The Hill, Trump blasts Supreme Court while arguing trials for migrants ‘not possible’. 

What Does This All Mean?

You never know what will happen tomorrow, or next week. But, for now, His Most High Excellency has backed off deporting people without due process. 

Posted on

How Team Trump is Responding, as of Sunday Night, to the Supreme Court’s Order on Immigration Due Process

I think sounds of silence signal that the legal part of Team Trump is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend.

Meanwhile, an insightful op-ed in the N.Y. Times speaks of a recently invented right wing legal principle—the major questions doctrine, newly discovered as a conservative cure for perceived liberal excesses—that requires “clear congressional authorization” when the bureaucrats make decisions of great “economic and political significance.” Otherwise, bye-bye liberal policy adventuresomeness. 

Now, Orange Mussolini is the poster child for one who makes decisions of great economic and political significance without a ghost of a shadow of congressional authorization. 

Will the courts apply their new major questions doctrine in an intellectually consistent way? Stay tuned. We’ll find out in due course. See Aaron Tang, Will This Conservative Legal Doctrine Undo Trump’s First Months in Office?

Enquiring minds want to know.