A federal judge reined in President Donald Trump’s firing spree Monday, ruling that a federal ethics watchdog can return to his job for at least a few days while the judge receives more detailed legal arguments about the case.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the reprieve to Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, after he sued to contest the Friday night email he received from the White House indicating he’d been dismissed from his position. Dellinger, an appointee of President Joe Biden, is just one of various officials across the government whom Trump has tried to fire in recent days. Some of them are covered by federal statutes that limit the president’s authority to dismiss them.
Donald Trump fumed over the state of New York’s fraud judgment against him in a Truth Social post Tuesday morning.
The president used to call New York his home, but in his post, he said it “is the most corrupt State in the Union.”
“We need great Judges and Politicians to help fix New York, and to stop the kind of Lawfare that was launched against me, from falsely valuing Mar-a-Lago at $18 Million Dollars, when it is worth, perhaps, 100 times that amount (The corrupt judge was replaced by another judge, only to be immediately put back on the case when the Democrat political leaders found out that a change of judges was made. It has become a great embarrassment for the New York Judicial System!),” Trump’s post read.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said “we have to” follow court decisions in the Trump administration’s various legal battles, even as top officials challenge the judicial actions.
On Tuesday, Rounds was asked by MSNBC about the judges who are pushing back on President Trump’s executive orders.
“I think it’s a very, very clear line between the powers that are there, that are appropriate. This president is saying, ‘I believe I have the authority,’” Rounds said. “You find out in a court of law and if they are appropriate, you move forward with them.”
He then was asked if lawmakers will have to follow whatever the court’s decision ultimately is.
“We have to,” Rounds replied. “We will follow the decisions of the court and I don’t think there’s been anybody saying no.”
The Trump administration has been dealt a series of legal blows over the last several weeks as judges across the country issued rulings or temporary orders blocking the president from unilaterally firing civil servants, freezing federal funding, ending birthright citizenship, pushing federal workers to resign en masse and cutting billions of dollars in funding for health research grants.
A majority of these cases are still making their way through the courts and it's likely at least some of them will end up before the Supreme Court.
Vance stirred controversy when he suggested on Sunday that "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."
His comments came after a federal judge halted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive payment systems within the Treasury Department.
The American Bar Association condemns recent remarks of high-ranking officials of the administration that appear to question the legitimacy of judicial review and demand impeachment of a judge merely because the court did not agree with the government’s position. These comments pose serious risks to our constitutional framework that separates power among three co-equal branches.
Last week, the administration lost a pretrial motion in a federal district court, which halted government efforts to gain access to Department of Treasury records including private records of many, if not all, U.S. citizens.
It is certainly not the first time an administration has not prevailed in a pretrial motion in one of thousands of cases it files or defends each year. There is no final judgment in this case and, in any event, the government can appeal in a manner it has done countless times over the years. The right to appeal is there for any party dissatisfied with a court’s decision. It is also the right of every American and the government to criticize a decision made by the courts.
What is never acceptable is what was said by representatives of this administration, including the misleading assertion that judges cannot control the executive’s legitimate power and calls for impeachment of a judge who did not rule in the administration’s favor. It is also not acceptable to attack the judge making the ruling or try to interfere with the independence of the court.
These statements attack the legitimacy of judicial oversight just because a court’s ruling is not what the administration wants in a particular case. It is a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy that the courts are the protectors of the citizenry from government overreach. All lawyers know that judges have the authority to determine whether the administration’s actions are lawful and a legitimate exercise of executive branch authority. It is one of the oldest and most revered precedent in United States legal history — Marbury v. Madison. This is a key principle that is taught in the first year of law school.
These bold assertions, designed to intimidate judges by threatening removal if they do not rule the government's way, cross the line. They create a risk to the physical security of judges and have no place in our society. There have also been suggestions that the executive branch should consider disobeying court orders. These statements threaten the very foundation of our constitutional system.
The ABA calls for every lawyer and legal organization to speak with one voice and to condemn the efforts of any administration that suggests its actions are beyond the reach of judicial review. We also call for condemnation and rejection of calls for the impeachment of a judge who did not rule in a certain way.
This is not the first time we have called out criticism and efforts to demonize the courts. The ABA spoke last fall during the previous administration and called out comments from both sides.
We recognize the potential risk to our profession, the ABA and our members, by speaking. But to stay silent is to suggest that these statements are acceptable or the new norm. They are not. And we will not be silent in the face of such words that are contrary to our constitutional system. They pose a clear and present challenge to our democracy and the separation of powers among the three independent branches. We will stand for the rule of law today as we have for nearly 150 years.
The ABA is one of the largest voluntary associations of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law. View our privacy statement online. Follow the latest ABA news at www.americanbar.org/news and on X (formerly Twitter) @ABANews.
"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, February 112, 2025. As the country appears to be headed towards a Constitutional crisis, James Zogby and others show up -- after the election -- to insist it's not their fault -- that they tanked the election to prevent the highly qualified Black woman (yes, it really was about race and gender) from being president.
Let's start with Rachel Maddow.
That's the frightening world we live in right now -- where court orders are being ignored, where Donald Chump is refusing to follow the rule of law, the checks and balances put into our system from the start to ensure democracy. It appears that we may be headed into a Constitutional crisis.
For more on the administration's war on the courts, see Betty's "Alien Musk and JD want to kill the courts" and Ann's "Grifter JD."
Rachel spoke with Senator Elizabeth Warren about this issue but MSNBC hasn't posted that yet. Jen Psaki also covered this issue last night and spoke with former Judge Nancy Gertner (former US district judge of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts).
Gertner also speaks with Leila Fadel today on NPR's MORNING EDITION.
At SLATE, Dahlia Lithwick examines the legal landscape:
If the theme of the first week of the Elon Musk and Donald Trump autocoup was “Why isn’t anyone doing anything to stop this?” then the theme of this past week was “Go lawyers.” The Trump administration has been hit with over 40 lawsuits challenging everything from DOGE’s takeover of the Treasury to the “Fork in the Road” fake buyout scheme for federal employees. And the scoreboard is, thus far, tilting in favor of the rule of law. Trump has lost on his efforts to rescind birthright citizenship, on his attempt to freeze government spending, on efforts to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, and on an attempted purge of the FBI. Vice President J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, in response, have now floated the idea of just ignoring judicial orders they dislike, but thus far we haven’t seen much of that. With the caveat that the courts have no army, at least at this moment the red line manned by the judiciary seems to be holding. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with former Judge Nancy Gertner, who is on the board of State Democracy Defenders Action, one of the many groups filing lawsuits to protect government employees and public data from Musk’s efforts to move fast and break things. Judge Gertner is a former United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is a senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. Their conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Some reactions on BLUESKY.
That is a major problem and there are so many problems that the convicted felon is creating for our country. At THE MARY SUE, Rachel Ulatowski notes South African born Alien Musk:
Elon Musk has given a 23-year-old DOGE employee access to the Energy Department’s IT systems despite alleged pushback from the department, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapon arsenal.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Musk has relentlessly pushed himself and his so-called DOGE into every corner of the government. He forced his way into sensitive government information from USAID, putting the agency’s security chiefs on leave to do so. Additionally, he gained access to federal pay systems in the Treasury and student loan systems in the Department of Education, including the personal information of millions of Americans and students. It’s highly unusual for someone who is not part of an official government agency and who has not been elected to a cabinet position to gain the level of access to sensitive information that Musk has seized. Even more concerning is that Musk’s 19 – 26 year-old DOGE employees are accessing this information, too.
Musk has been suspiciously secretive about his DOGE employees, refusing to release many of their names and qualifications for their positions. There are concerns about how, or even if, he’s vetting these candidates. Given that one DOGE employee has already resigned after promoting racism and eugenics, Americans have reason to be concerned with who exactly Musk is giving access to classified government information, especially since they could potentially access information relating to nuclear weapons.
In furtherance of the protest vote, the DSA called supporters to “make calls, text voters, knock doors and organize.” While Biden easily won the primary with over 81 percent of the vote, over 13 percent of voters, some 101,000 people, selected “Uncommitted.” About 43,000 people voted for Democratic primary candidates other than Biden.
Despite attempts by media efforts to present this protest vote as an expression of Biden’s collapsing support only among Muslim and Arab-American populations in Dearborn and other areas around Detroit, “Uncommitted” garnered at least an 8 percent vote in all 83 counties in Michigan. In total, 73 out of 83 counties in the state recorded at least a 10 percent vote for “Uncommitted.”
The Democrats, and the ruling class as a whole, are terrified that this mounting opposition to “Genocide Joe” will lead to a break with the Democratic Party and capitalist politics entirely.
In the same program, James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute and director of the influential political research group Zogby Research Services, reiterated, “As the congressman said, as the organizers of this movement have been very clear, this is not the ‘Abandon Biden’ movement. This is the ‘for god’s sake, shape up or you might lose in November’ Biden movement.”
In the same vein, Branko Marcetic, writing in Jacobin, the house organ of the DSA, went out of his way to stress in a February 28 article titled “Michigan’s Primary Shows Biden Is Courting Political Suicide” that the “Uncommitted” campaign was seeking to save Biden’s presidency, not challenge it.
The national results show Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein received 53% of the Muslim vote, followed by President-elect Donald Trump with 21% and Vice President Kamala Harris with 20%.
CAIR also released Michigan-specific responses from 502 registered Muslim voters, revealing that Dr. Stein received 59% support, with Trump at 22% and Harris at 14%.
Jose Luis had stopped to pump gas on his way to work in southern Texas when his family’s whole life changed.
ICE agents pulled up out of nowhere and demanded to know his immigration status. The father of five, who came to the United States from Mexico in 2010 when he was 19, was quickly placed in handcuffs and taken away.
Now, he is facing deportation and permanent separation from his wife and kids — and the family’s sole income is gone.
“His little girls ask every day ‘Where’s Dad? What time is he coming home?’” his wife, Rosa, who doesn’t want to break her children’s heart by revealing the truth just yet, tells The Independent. “I have to tell them he’s out working.”
“I’m really stressed right now, like really, really stressed. I don’t know what’s next,” she says.
Jose Luis is one of some 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. — many of whom have lived, worked, paid taxes and raised families in the country for years — who are being targeted by authorities in what Donald Trump’s administration has promised to be the largest “mass deportation operation” in American history.
We have to live with the threats resulting from their stupidity so, yes, they have to live what they did.
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