The MAGA attack on justices

 

Wednesday, February 12 The legal battle against President Donald Trump’s sweeping and questionable executive orders is raging on, and with it looms a possible constitutional crisis. Also in this edition of Eye On The Right: Conservative media melts down over federal agencies paying for Politico Pro access and the legal challenges to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), explained. As always, thanks for reading. — Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer Elon Musk wasn’t elected, yet he’s using DOGE to take control of parts of our democracy. Over 20% of the lawsuits Democracy Docket is tracking are challenging DOGE — upgrade to our premium membership for $120/year to get crucial updates and analysis on these cases sent straight to your inbox. An Attack on Justices Since Trump returned to the White House and swiftly started dismantling democracy via an onslaught of executive orders, the courts have — to put it mildly — been busy. New lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s orders — whether it is over birthright citizenship, cutting off crucial funding or DOGE’s attempt to access the most sensitive federal databases —are popping up almost daily. So far, Trump is losing in the courts. Badly. Federal justices across the country are blocking the president’s orders — eight judges, according to Democracy Docket’s coverage of these lawsuits. It’s a clear sign that the checks and balances of our legal system are holding up and that Trump can’t just do whatever he wants with impunity. And that’s starting to get under his skin, along with the rest of his acolytes. Hours after a federal judge blocked DOGE’s access to sensitive Department of the Treasury data and systems, Musk threw a tantrum on X. “A corrupt judge protecting corruption,” he posted. “He needs to be impeached NOW!” Hours later, Vice President JD Vance followed suit: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.” On TruthSocial — the president’s own social media platform that I’m still struggling to understand why it’s legal for him to own — the right-wing ecosphere is melting down over justices upholding the rule of law. “We need to impeach rogue judges,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) posted. “The Constitutional power of impeachment applies to federal judges. Just saying,” conservative provocateur Jack Posobiec wrote. Littered throughout TruthSocial is an army of MAGA followers falsely suggesting that unelected judges are betraying Trump and need to be removed from their post. The cumulative effect of this seems to suggest a constitutional crisis. What happens if Trump defies these court orders? We’ll see. The Right Melts Down Over Media Subscriptions Last week, a handful of right-wing provocateurs on X discovered USASpending.gov, a government website where anyone can look up to see where unclassified federal spending goes. It’s a longtime tool that most journalists, or any people who like to track this kind of stuff, have used for years. But some conservatives who just found it for the first time melted down when they learned that the federal government apparently pays Politico several million dollars a year. Naturally, without any context or an attempt to learn how or why, the right flipped out over this revelation, alleging that the government has been funding Politico to, ostensibly, make Democrats look good. This was even flouted by Trump himself on TruthSocial: “LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS. THE LEFT WING ‘RAG,’ KNOWN AS ‘POLITICO,’ SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY! THE DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE. TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!” This is, of course, laughably and demonstrably false. The money toward Politico, as it was quickly revealed, was for subscriptions to Politico PRO from many different agencies, whose workers need access to it for their jobs. Nonetheless, the damage was done: "I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. "I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidize subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers' dime will no longer be happening." The irony of this is too rich not to share: A handful of right-wing media personalities blew up over the news, calling it one of the biggest media scandals in history. And yet, as the Washington Post’s Will Sommer pointed out, some of these media personalities were also ensnared in a Department of Justice investigation that revealed they were secretly and illegally paid millions by Russia. The Legal Challenges to Elon Musk’s DOGE, Explained Ever since Trump announced he was creating DOGE, it’s drawn intense skepticism and scrutiny. For starters, a president can’t just create a new federal agency via executive order — that can only happen through an act of Congress. Then what is DOGE? In essence, what Trump did is rename the United States Digital Service — created within the Executive Office of the President under Barack Obama to improve all the federal and executive websites — into DOGE and retooled its mission to hunt down fraud and waste within federal agencies. Naturally, chaos and uncertainty ensued. What authority does DOGE actually have? Are attempts to gain access to sensitive and classified data from federal agencies legal? And what can be done about it? That’s the essence of a wave of lawsuits filed against DOGE and its attempts to access sensitive information from numerous federal agencies. So far, there have been lawsuits filed to block DOGE’s access to the Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Education. In every case, federal judges have agreed to block DOGE’s access to requested information as they plan to look deeper into DOGE and if it has a constitutional right to access such data. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” a lawsuit to block DOGE’s access to the Treasury read. “People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to.” As of Tuesday at 6 p.m., two federal judges have blocked DOGE’s access to Treasury data after two different lawsuits were filed, including one by Democratic attorneys general from 19 states. In granting the plaintiffs a temporary restraining order, the judge wrote that the Trump administration’s new policy to grant DOGE access to the Treasury poses a risk “of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”