Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
What exactly is Alina Habba’s job title these days?
The pathetic and flailing attempts of the Department of Justice to keep former parking garage lawyer Alina Habba in the top job at the District of New Jersey may have come to an end, for now.
Habba, without a doubt, is wildly unqualified for the role. Her past experience representing President Donald Trump in personal matters and the aforementioned parking garage gig do not in any way mean she should be the top prosecutor in that district.
The problem for Trump is that Habba’s embarrassingly thin resume is likely too much even for the all-too-agreeable Senate Republicans. Interim U.S. attorneys can only keep that job for 120 days, after which the judges in the district could agree to extend it. They did not, which kicked off the world’s dumbest fight, where Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the career prosecutor the judges had named as Habba’s replacement, a move that does not help Habba get the job.
But as of Friday, the matter seems resolved, and all it took was tons of chicanery and bad faith. The administration pulled Habba’s nomination from the Senate, so she is now able to serve as acting U.S. attorney for another 210 days.
If Habba were truly a viable and reasonable candidate, she’d get past the Senate, the district court judges, or both. But she’s an inexperienced hothead in thrall to the president, and it’s that thrall, rather than any actual experience, that will keep her in the gig.
Treat time at the Supreme Court
By now, writing about Trump’s success at the nation’s highest court is a fill-in-the-blanks sort of thing: On ______, Trump went to the Supreme Court to ask for _________. The court’s conservatives agreed, staying the lower court order from ___________.
This time around, the administration needed the Supreme Court to bless yet another of Trump’s illegal firings of members of independent boards and agencies. In May, Trump removed the Democratic appointees of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, part of his overall assault on independent agencies. Sure, removing them without cause is literally barred by statute, but why would that matter if you have the Supreme Court on speed dial.
Obligingly, on Wednesday, the court’s conservatives ruled that Trump can go right ahead. Of course, they won’t actually decide on the merits, but instead are just doing this all on the shadow docket and just calling it a stay.
This is a favorite trick of both Trump and the right-wing justices. But call it what it is: another shadow overruling of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. That Supreme Court precedent forbids the president from doing exactly what he did here.
However, in a May shadow docket ruling, Trump v. Wilcox, the Supreme Court told Trump to just go right ahead, but without having the honesty to openly overrule Humphrey. Now, in the CPSC case, the court’s conservatives relied on their own nonexistent reasoning in Wilcox to just say that welp, CPSC commissioners are just like the other ones we’re letting him fire, but no, we won’t tell you why. It’s a really terrific and sustainable way to run a justice system.
Treat time at the Ninth Circuit
It can’t just be the Supreme Court that has to do the hard work of kneecapping lower courts in service to Trump. This week, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the administration’s request for a stay, so they don’t have to turn over their reduction-in-force plans.
In a suit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees challenging the mass firings, the lower court initially enjoined the administration from carrying out the firings. The Supreme Court, as you could have predicted, stayed that order, because of course.
When the case went back down after that, the lower court ordered the administration to provide the RIFs it is using in sealed copies to the court and attorneys for the plaintiffs. That seems fair and logical, because how can the plaintiff employees fight their mass termination without knowing the reasoning for that mass termination? Oh, you sweet summer child.
Per the administration, even that is too much. Thanks to the Ninth Circuit, those will all stay secret—even from the plaintiffs affected. Also a really terrific and sustainable way to run a justice system.
Treat time at the Eighth Circuit
… but this time for Mike Lindell! It’s nice to see that the federal courts can be solicitous toward not just Trump, but also to the lesser denizens of Trump World. So this time, an all-GOP panel on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stretched the law well past its breaking point to figure out a way to let Lindell off the hook for the $5 million he owes a software developer who disproved his claims of election fraud.
The decision is almost stupefyingly boring, turning as it does on a fight over the scope of the term “related to,” but the bottom line is that at least in this instance, everything is coming up Lindell.
Missouri attorney general continues to act out
Spare a thought for Missourians who have to endure having Andrew Bailey, a mini-Trump if ever there was one, as their attorney general. When he isn’t busy writing to technology companies complaining their chatbots aren’t nice enough to Trump, he’s suing Planned Parenthood. Anything to get attention from Daddy.
The basis of Bailey’s suit is that Planned Parenthood is lying about the effects of mifepristone, the drug used in medication abortions. Never mind that literally over 100 studies found the drug to be safe and effective. Bailey thinks that even the Federal Drug Administration’s label language is wrong because of “recent studies” showing how dangerous it is. What studies? You don’t know them. They go to another school. In Canada.