#lisa needham

[tomorrowusa]

Meet the freaks Trump may tap for the Supreme Court

It’s tough to imagine a Supreme Court with justices worse than the current crop of conservatives, but the folks who are currently vying to r

There had been some recent reporting, accurate or not, about the retirement of Justice Samuel Alito from the US Supreme Court.

That has led to speculation about who Trump might appoint to replace him. The names that have popped up make Alito look like Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall.

I added bold type to the names of potential Trump appointees to SCOTUS.

It’s tough to imagine a Supreme Court with justices worse than the current crop of conservatives, but the folks who are currently vying to replace whichever justice steps down first are definitively, openly, gleefully much more terrible.  [ ... ] Judge James Ho is arguably the worst judge on the worst federal appeals court, the Fifth Circuit. Ho has genuinely lost the plot, arguing that the Supreme Court is not there to “check the excesses of other branches.” Perhaps being a fancy federal appeals judge and a former clerk to Justice Thomas rots your brain and sense of civic duty, because being a check on the excesses of other branches is kind of the whole job description for the Supreme Court. [ ... ] Another Trump appointee to the Fifth Circuit, Andrew Oldham, is also busy treating his current position as a way to show Trump that he has no intention of ever ruling against him. According to Judge Oldham, a former Alito clerk, if Trump declares that there is a terrible invasion by Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, no court can ever review it, and Trump can therefore deport all Venezuelan citizens.  [ ... ] Judge Neomi Rao has made sure to let her colleagues know how incandescently angry she was when they didn’t treat a Supreme Court shadow docket ruling as a permission slip for Trump to fire whoever he wants.  There’s also Gregory Katsas, who believes that courts cannot impose any consequences on Trump or the executive branch. [ ... ] Over in the Second Circuit, Judge Steven Menashi is showing what a loyal justice he would be by haranguing his colleagues about Trump’s attempt to throw out the jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Katsas whined about how unfair the lower court was in not letting Trump provide evidence that he believed her lawsuit was “concocted by his political opposition” and therefore he could not have defamed her. [ ... ] Emil Bove, formerly one of many personal attorneys who represented Trump in criminal cases, was rewarded for his efforts with an appointment to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. You would think that normally, being the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints about refusing to follow court orders would be a bit of a hindrance to a lifetime seat, but for Trump, Bove’s actions were a feature, not a bug.  And then there’s U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon’s efforts at protecting Trump from any criminal consequences are truly unparalleled. She didn’t just throw out the criminal case over Trump’s retention of top secret documents after he left office, documents which he stashed in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. She also came up with a very … unique theory that former Special Counsel Jack Smith could never release the report of his investigation and that even writing up the investigation was somehow illegal.

Those people shouldn't be on the federal bench in the first place. They probably shouldn't even have been accepted at law school.

They are federal judges because the Republican-controlled Senate in 2017-2021 and 2025-2026 confirmed these Trump lickspittles.

If for no other reason, we need to flip the Senate to prevent additional Trump SCOTUS pics from being confirmed.

THIS YEAR'S SENATE BATTLEGROUND STATES:

1] Seats currently held by Republicans...

Texas

Maine

Ohio

Alaska

Iowa

North Carolina

2] Seats currently held by Democrats which need to be shored up...

Michigan

New Hampshire

3] GOP seats which could be vulnerable in a wave election...

Florida

Nebraska

South Carolina

The obsequious Lindsey Graham is only 3 points ahead in a June poll in the South Carolina US Senate race. In a deep red state like SC, an incumbent GOP senator should be way ahead.

Every US Senate election should be regarded as a Supreme Court election. Don't wait until September to start work on flipping the Senate. If you live in one of the states listed above, contact your county or state Democratic Party to volunteer. You can also contact the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

[macwantspeace]

“The US attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, decided to indict 15 Minnesotans on laughably weak charges of conspiracy, solicitation of a crime, etc...trying to backfill his delusion that “antifa” is an organized group” Beer & tacos on Tuesdays. Y’all come.

Minnesota anti-ICE protesters get the Broadview 6 treatment

The process is the punishment.

The Trump administration is fixated on punishing Minnesota — and Minnesotans — for daring to stand up to the violent ICE goons that flooded into the state last winter.

So it’s regrettably not all that surprising that the US attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, decided to indict 15 Minnesotans on laughably weak charges of conspiracy, solicitation of a crime, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property.

link here shows Aaron Rupar with a clip commenting, "Oh, so they have NOTHING nothing."

What is really going on here is that the Department of Justice is doing President Trump’s bidding by trying to backfill his delusion that “antifa” is an organized group of terrorists rather than what it really is — a term people use to signify they are anti-fascist. Trump also wants to criminalize any resistance to federal law enforcement, including simply discussing what that resistance entails.

[macwantspeace]

How Trump hacked the judiciary

His fake "emergencies" are pushing the country toward autocracy.

This administration’s philosophy towards laws is fundamentally the Steve Bannon approach — to flood the zone with shit.

It does things with no legal justification at all. It does things based on legal justifications that are obviously false. It does things based on legal justifications that have never been used before. It does things based on legal justifications that stretch far beyond reason. And it does so, always, by saying there is some emergency that allows — even requires — such action.

Courts are tangled up in this mess, playing whack-a-mole with each new development, while the rest of us try to survive a lawless, dangerous presidency.

[tomorrowusa]

« The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy isn’t a strategy. Despite its pedantic condescension of explaining that “a ‘strategy’ is a concrete, realistic plan that explains the essential connection between ends and means,” the document, released on Dec. 5, fails to meet that standard itself. This “strategy” is instead a statement of values. And those values are vandalism against the very things that have made the United States of America strong, safe, and prosperous.

[ … ]

In fact, what this “strategy” does make clear is that the only war that the Trump administration wants to fight is a culture war. And it sees the United States’ adversaries as partners in that war, but it does not see how much U.S. power relies on the voluntary assistance of other countries. It also fails to recognize that if the United States isn’t the dominant power of the international order, it will be subject to the rules of others. States that are friends and allies of the United States will despair at this strategy; our enemies will be thrilled. »

— Kori Schake, senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. From the journal Foreign Policy. (archived)

The so called "National Security Strategy" reads like it was written in the Kremlin.

We're the baddies now. Our new Security Strategy shows it.

[macwantspeace]

“How, if at all, can a state tell the federal government to pound sand when the taxman comes around?

Could Minnesota do any of these things? As with all law-related questions in the Trump era, the answer is: it’s complicated.”

Lisa Needham

What if we just stopped paying taxes?

Where there's a will there (might) be a way.

[joe-england]

All the laws flouted during SignalGate - by Lisa Needham

All the laws flouted during SignalGate

Very illegal and very not cool.

[joe-england]

Trump's hostile takeover of big law - by Lisa Needham

Trump's hostile takeover of big law

Paul, Weiss's capitulation is bad news for the legal profession.

[thatstormygeek]

The state wants the court to permanently bar the NCAA from allowing trans women to compete in women’s sporting events. In the alternative, they’ll take forcing the NCAA to stop using the term “women” for sporting events where trans women can compete if the event is in Texas or involves Texas teams. As far as protecting the sacred womanhood of sports, or whatever it is Paxton is pretending he is doing here, this lawsuit is entirely unnecessary. Texas already bans trans athletes from participating in collegiate sports in the state. But that’s not enough for Texas. It wants to reach into other states — states that may have laws that protect trans people — and impose a trans athlete ban if there’s a Texas team playing. This lawsuit is no different, fundamentally, than the legal attacks Paxton has made on Biden administration rules. The state has mastered the art of suing within the state to get results outside the state. The nationwide injunctions Paxton and company manage to obtain are the best way to impose their will on everyone else. Paxton succeeded in getting a nationwide injunction to stop the Federal Trade Commission’s non-compete rule from taking effect. He scored another from Trump nominee Judge Drew Tipton, blocking the Biden administration’s attempts to limit the authority of ICE and reduce arrests of immigrants. He’s currently suing to block a rule that bars access to medical records of people who cross state lines to get an abortion. There’s no question we’re going to see more of this kind of lawfare from conservatives. It isn’t just the 2024 election results that are buoying them. They’ve been emboldened by Trump’s capture of the federal courts, turning the branch of government that is supposed to be the most neutral into an attack dog to be deployed against anything they don’t like. They’ve also been emboldened by their continued ability to judge-shop, making sure to get their most culture warring cases in front of two judges in Texas who are exceedingly friendly to rightwing causes.

Texas sues to impose bigotry on the rest of the country

Ken Paxton's lawsuit against the NCAA is a glorified Fox News segment.