Typical Trump nominee

 

I smell a(nother) lawsuit

 

Just read it.  It's short.

White grievance

 

Next stop: Trump's judges

 

He'll be running to SCOTUS.

“Have we no shame?” Judge William Young asked, in an unmistakeable echo of attorney Jack Welch, who famously punctured Joe McCarthy’s popularity with his simple plea for decency.

[...]

[Trump] declared that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and branded “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” as discriminatory against women and girls.

  Public Notice

Not in their name, asshole.

This is a radical misstatement of the law. No court in the land has ever held that DEI — whatever that means — constitutes racial discrimination, or that allowing trans people to participate in society amounts to gender discrimination. It also defies the medical and scientific consensus about sex, gender, and biology. But no matter! The president redefined reality by executive fiat, and then instructed his minions to carry out a purge consistent with his edict.

[...]The administration immediately moved to kick trans service members out of the military, reorient the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to focus on “DEI-related discrimination at work,” and pulled down websites on everything from baseball icon Jackie Robinson to transgender health care.

But while the government was busy deleting pronouns from civil servants’ signature lines, it also slashed thousands of federal grants because some DOGE bro (or possibly an AI) decided that the recipient was vaguely “woke” — whatever that means. At NIH, more than a $1 billion of funding was cut because of its supposed association with “woke” ideologies.

[...]

A coalition of 16 blue states sued, and the case was joined with a similar one filed by several public health and labor groups. They argued that NIH “adopted a series of directives that blacklist certain topics — e.g., ‘DEI,’ ‘gender,’ or ‘vaccine hesitancy’ — that the Administration disfavors.”

All the impoundment cases, which involve money appropriate by Congress which the Trump administration simply refuses to disburse, recite a now-familiar set of legal claims. And indeed the plaintiffs here, too, argue that the president is violating the Spending Clause and the separation of powers — essentially that he is stealing Congress’s power over the federal budget. They also call the grant terminations “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

[...]

Judge Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, called the terminations “arbitrary and capricious.” But he went further than other judges in the many impoundment suits, calling the administration out for its flagrant animus against racial and sexual minorities.

“I am hesitant to draw this conclusion — but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it — that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” he said, according to Politico. “That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.“

[...]

“Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore rather than seriously examine biological realities,” [DOJ lawyer Thomas Ports Jr.] said. ”It is an improvement to eliminate these.”

“Where’s the support for that?” Judge Young shot back. “I see no evidence of that.”

Of course, there is no such evidence of that, which is why the government never presented any. Instead it pointed to Trump’s executive orders, insisting that the president gets to make his own reality. [...] Ports wasn’t even able to define “DEI” when pressed by the court.

“You are bearing down on people of color because of their color,” the judge hammered on. “The Constitution will not permit that.”

[...]

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Judge Young fumed. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Just wait, judge.

Trump 2.0 - Challenging the courts

 

I'd say Trump is just letting Roberts know who's boss.  Challenging him.

Its behavior in the Alien Enemies Act case seems designed to rankle the chief in every conceivable way: Rather than win the case on the merits, the administration has launched a multilevel assault on the presiding judge, James Boasberg. It isn’t just that Donald Trump, along with his co-President Elon Musk, has called for Boasberg’s impeachment—though that escalation did prompt Roberts to issue a rare rejoinder. It’s that the Justice Department, too, has gotten in on the action, insulting Boasberg in insolent filings that openly question his integrity, neutrality, and competence. In short, the administration is deliberately staking this out as a battle between the executive branch and the judicial branch.

[...]

[T]he Trump administration seems eager to prevail in the court of public opinion, then leverage that victory to make the courts fall in line—the same play it’s running on Congress. The public-facing side of this strategy is obvious enough. First, the administration raced to deport Venezuelan migrants whom it accused, without evidence, of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang. Then it invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to argue that courts had no authority to stop the operation. When Boasberg ordered a halt to it nonetheless, high-ranking Trump officials bashed him in the media, while Trump and Musk called for his impeachment. House Republicans have now introduced articles of impeachment against the judge, and Musk is encouraging the effort by donating money to lawmakers who support it.

In court, the administration’s tone is only somewhat less contemptuous.

“The court,” the lawyers wrote, “has now spent more time trying to ferret out information about the government’s flight schedules and relations with foreign countries than it did in investigating the facts” before ruling for the migrants. (In reality, this information is largely public already, because the White House shared many details of the operation while boasting about the deportation flights.) Boasberg, they continued, was seeking “to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the government legally immaterial facts,” including “state secrets.” (The relevant facts are not “legally immaterial”—they could show whether the government broke the law!) The filing called on Boasberg to end his “unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions” and asked him to freeze proceedings while they begged an appeals court to bail them out.

  Slate

If they behave this way to a judge who has ruled favorably for Trump, imagine what they'll do to judges like Tanya Chutkan.

The DOJ’s crude treatment of Boasberg sends the unmistakable message that he is a rogue judge who needs to be reined in by a tough president and, ideally, a congressional impeachment. Attorney General Pam Bondi made her agency’s position clear on Wednesday, when she accused the judge of “meddling in our government.” Why, she asked, is Boasberg “trying to protect terrorists who invaded our country over American citizens?” (Again, there is no evidence these people are terrorists.) The thrust of her comments, echoed in DOJ filings, is that Boasberg is so biased and reckless that he cannot be trusted to oversee a case with such sensitive implications for national security.

[...]

The chief justice himself appointed Boasberg to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as presiding judge; in that position, he regularly reviewed, and ruled upon, extraordinarily sensitive requests by intelligence agencies to surveil communications between suspected spies and foreign powers. The surveillance court’s work is shrouded in secrecy, and even the smallest public disclosure could jeopardize vital intelligence operations.

[...]

And the fact that [Roberts] stepped into the fray to defend Boasberg is proof in itself that the administration has made a misstep. Moreover, a defining feature of Roberts’ jurisprudence is his intolerance for bad lawyering. His past votes against Trump reflect an aversion to sloppy and dishonest legal arguments, and he does not take kindly to insulting, patronizing, or underhanded reasoning. Yet that is exactly how the Justice Department has approached Boasberg in this case.

Here's another one...

Hard to miss the true aim of Trump 2.0.

UPDATE 08:19 am:

UPDATE 08:58 am:

What they used to call "reverse discrimination"

A large majority of people who voted for former President Trump say they are concerned about anti-white discrimination in the United States, according to a new poll from the University of Virginia and Project Home Fire released on Friday.

Eighty-four percent of Trump voters who responded to the survey say they either strongly or somewhat agree that discrimination against whites will increase in the U.S. in the next few years. Of respondents who voted for President Biden, 38 percent said they felt the same way.

  The Hill

1) That's not going to happen while white people control the wealth in this country - which is going to be forever;

2) What do you mean, increase? Where's the discrimination against whites? We must be calling equal opportunity rules discrimination against whites; 

3) Gee, wouldn't that be a shame.

What these people are saying is, "We don't want to be treated like dark-skinned people."

Deconstructing America as fast as they can

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Department of Housing and Urban Development from implementing a rule that would have made it harder to bring discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act.

The rule, set to take effect Monday, would have required plaintiffs to meet a higher threshold to prove unintentional discrimination, known as disparate impact. The new rule — an update to the agency’s 2013 disparate impact rule — would also have given defendants more leeway to rebut the claims.

[...]

The injunction means HUD will be unable to implement the new rule until the legal challenge is resolved.

  Politico

They'll probably take it to the Supreme Court, which they've packed. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why do you think he's racist?

Effective from Tuesday, the Trump administration is replacing an Obama-era rule that sought to end racial segregation and discrimination in American housing.

President Trump says the rollback of the rule, which forced cities to report on housing discrimination in their communities, is to give local governments more freedom from federal regulations.

  alJazeera

But he's going to send in US troops to stop the protesting.  Freedom from CERTAIN federal regulations.

He's not racist.

He's guaranteeing black voter turnout.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

"Marshalls"  Ha!

The Supreme Court hasn't gone completely batshit

The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

  alJazeera

Why were they even debating this issue?

The outcome is expected to have a significant effect on the estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country because most states do not protect them from workplace discrimination.

[...]

The Trump administration had changed course from the Obama administration, which supported LGBT workers in their discrimination claims under Title VII.

[...]

The cases were the court's first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement and replacement by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States. Kavanaugh is generally regarded as more conservative.

Just call a spade a spade. Kavanaugh is an uptight faux Christian.

Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Of course they did.

"The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of 'sex' is different from discrimination because of 'sexual orientation' or 'gender identity'," Alito wrote in a dissent that was joined by Thomas.

They will find any technicality or loophole to discriminate, won't they?

The law prohibits discrimination because of sex but has no specific protection for sexual orientation or gender identity.

I see. Apparently we're defining 'sex' narrowly as having male or female biology. And this makes me wonder...do hermaphrodites have legal protections?

In recent years, some lower courts have held that discrimination against LGBT people is a subset of sex discrimination, and thus prohibited by the federal law.

Efforts by Congress to change the law have so far failed.

Because (mostly) Republicans wanted to keep that technicality available. So now, with this ruling, will they be able to change the law, or will the people who don't want it changed say it no longer matters?

Of course, they are still controlled by "conservatives".

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a permit for a controversial $8 billion gas pipeline that would tunnel below the famed Appalachian Trail.

The 7-2 opinion handed a defeat to environmental groups who challenged the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), which would carry natural gas some 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina.

[...]

Two of the court’s liberals, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented.

[...]

"For decades, more than 50 other pipelines have safely crossed the trail without disturbing its public use. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline will be no different," ACP spokeswoman Ann Nallo said by email, reiterating the company's plans to be in operation by 2022.

"To avoid impacts to the trail, the pipeline will be installed hundreds of feet below the surface and emerge more than a half-mile from each side of the trail. There will be no construction activity on or near the trail itself, and the public will be able to continue enjoying the trail as they always have."

The case came before the justices on appeal from a 2018 ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with environmentalists.

[...]

“While today’s decision was not what we hoped for, it addresses only one of the many problems faced by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. This is not a viable project. It is still missing many required authorizations, including the Forest Service permit at issue in today’s case, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will soon consider the mounting evidence that we never needed this pipeline to supply power,” DJ Gerken, with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which sued over the pipeline, said in a statement.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Racism in the time of Trump

A job listing from Cynet Systems, a tech recruiting firm based in Virginia, sought an account manager who is “preferably Caucasian who has good technical background”. After a number of Twitter users called attention to the listing, it was removed on Sunday.

It’s unclear how long the help wanted ad, posted on LinkedIn and other sites, was live before the company removed it. Cynet issued an apology, saying individuals involved had been fired and the job post “does not reflect our core values of inclusivity & equality”.

“We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were, too,” the company’s co-CEO, Ashwani Mayur, said.

  Guardian

You can understand why someone thought it was OK to place an ad like that. They were just a little ahead of the curve; another two years of Trump and it could be commonplace. Make America Great Again!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This is MAGA

The Justice Department today told the U.S. Supreme Court that businesses can discriminate against workers based on their gender identity without violating federal law.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the high court that a civil rights law banning sex discrimination on the job doesn’t cover transgender bias.

[...]

“The court of appeals misread the statute and this Court’s decisions in concluding that Title VII encompasses discrimination on the basis of gender identity,” Francisco said in a brief filed with the court.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming months whether to take up the case. It’s also been asked to consider two other cases testing whether sexual orientation bias is a form of sex discrimination banned under the existing law.

[...]

The DOJ’s brief follows a New York Times report that the Department of Health and Human Services is considering limiting its definition of gender to sex assigned at birth.

[...]

[T]he Sixth Circuit last year became the first federal appeals court in the country to conclude that transgender bias is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It previously recognized transgender discrimination as a form of prohibited sex stereotyping.>The American Civil Liberties Union has intervened in the case.

[...]

The Justice Department—and 16 states that recently asked the Supreme Court to scrap the decision—say Congress didn’t intend Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination to cover bias against lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender employees.

  Bloomberg

Jesus.

This is why the Supreme Court judges are so important. Expect more shit for years to come.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What else has Sessions rescinded?

All these guidance documents:

N.B.: