Musk, Trump allies use impeachment threats to intimidate federal judges

 

Tuesday, March 4 Musk and Trump allies use impeachment threats to intimidate federal judges Billionaire Elon Musk in recent weeks has raged in a blizzard of social media posts at federal judges who have ruled against his efforts to disembowel the government and executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, calling for impeachment. Trump allies in Congress have followed his lead. Since the country’s founding, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and only eight have been convicted and removed. Notably, none of them were based on a disagreement with how a judge ruled. But experts warn Musk’s threats could still have an impact by intimidating judges. Here’s what you need to know. A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR The Trump administration is giving DOGE unrestricted access to Americans’ personal data, including our finances, health records, and social security data. This leaves every one of us vulnerable to data breaches, mass surveillance, politically motivated attacks, and worse. Join the ACLU in demanding that Congress act now to stop DOGE from violating our privacy. Judge says Trump illegally fired chair of federal workers protections board A federal judge ruled that Trump violated federal law and exceeded his authority by firing without reason Cathy Harris, chair of a board that protects the rights of federal employees. The Trump admin appealed the ruling to the D.C. Circuit. By not stating a cause for Harris’ dismissal, the judge said Trump specifically violated the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which states the board members can be removed by the president “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 22 Democratic states request court force FEMA to release federal funds In the federal funding freeze challenge from 22 Democratic states, the states requested a federal court force Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to release millions of dollars from over 140 federal grants that the states claim have been frozen since Feb. 7. The freeze on an enormous swath of federal spending set off mass confusion, frustration and uncertainty amongst millions of Americans that rely on federally funded child care, food assistance and housing programs and hundreds of nonprofits that depend on governmental grants. A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR The so called Department of Government Efficiency is composed of unvetted outsiders who have forced their way into the government’s most protected systems without care or consideration for the safeguards created by Congress to keep our data safe. Join the ACLU in calling on Congress to step up and check the president’s violations of our rights. Speaking of FEMA… The former top financial officer for FEMA, Mary Comans, sued the Trump administration, claiming she was unlawfully terminated without cause last month. Comans said Trump officials defamed her by stating she was fired for helping disperse federal funds to house migrants in New York City. Overturning Roe was never just about sending abortion back to the states As we brace for federal restrictions, state lawmakers are moving to hamper future abortion ballot campaigns, and are even attacking amendments that have already passed. Contributor Susan Rinkunas explained some of the GOP's most recent attacks on abortion. Hearing coming up tomorrow A hearing will be held at 10 a.m. EST in a lawsuit from Gwynne Wilcox challenging her removal from the National Labor Relations Board. Wilcox claimed that Trump fired her without cause, violating federal law, and asked to be reinstated.

 

A Big Fire Hose

Joyce Vance Feb 13

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Just to give you some idea of how vast the diameter of the firehose that Trump is spewing stuff through is right now, I decided to go back through social media to give you a sense of all of the legal issues I was tracking on Tuesday. Just Tuesday and just the mainstream legal issues. This is the opposite approach from the one I have schooled myself to stick with here, trying to take it all in and distill it down to just a few key items each evening. That’s the approach I’m committed to here and with The Democracy Index.

But this little zoom out is important to get a sense of just how much Trump 2.0 is doing and how fast they are doing it. It serves to underscore what we all know, that none of this is normal.

If a new president was really looking for evidence of waste and fraud in agency spending, he’d send in forensic accountants, investigators, and prosecutors—not coders and hackers. If he really wanted to reform government, he wouldn’t do it by breaking laws, like the ones about how to go about lawfully replacing inspectors general. The lack of commitment to good government—and by extension, to us, the citizens of this country—is apparent everywhere.

Right now, there is so much going on that it’s virtually impossible to track everything. At least we know why there is so much happening—Trump is trying to flood the zone with distraction in hopes we will be unable to figure out what’s most important, let alone focus on it. It’s become relatively clear that his goal is accumulating power, using non-government agency DOGE to do the dirty work of disrupting democracy to get there.

That basic idea, that Trump is engaging in a major disruption and transformation of government, properly called an internal coup, continues to remain front and center for me. This morning, in the pre-caffeine haze that is becoming so familiar, I had an idea and dictated a start on my column for tonight on that theme. That’s the column you may have seen this morning (complete with the name misspelling of Allen Charles Raul, whose excellent column in The Washington Post I discussed). Instead of saving the column to work on later after I got my first draft down on paper, I hit send. This is my life in the time of Trump; even as you try to maintain some sanity in the face of everything that’s going on, the crazy can still get to you.

I share this both out of embarrassment and apology, but more importantly, because it feels so emblematic to me of what happens now that we’re constantly drinking from the gushing firehose. The next four years are not going to be easy for any of us, but they’re going to be important. We may have to tolerate a little mess to get the job done.

If you didn’t get a chance to read “Call it What It Is” this morning, since it landed in your mailbox at an odd mid-morning time, I hope you’ll take a look tonight. The central idea feels very important to me right now.

As for the big picture on Tuesday, by the end of the night I had so many tabs open on my computer—half a dozen court decisions and even more news reports—that it was groaning about lack of memory. Here are some of the crazy in bullet points:

• In a clear, and also an extremely petty, violation of the First Amendment, the Associated Press reported that they “were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.” Later in the day, they were refused access.

  We have serious problems. This is ridiculous.

• The New York Times is trying to get DOJ to release Volume 2 of Jack Smith’s report, the one about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. So far, DOJ has refused. The Times is appealing the decision administratively, inside of DOJ, but they’ve filed a lawsuit as well, in the likely event DOJ refuses to release Volume 2.

• The head of DOJ’s tax division, a veteran of 40 years, resigned instead of agreeing to be moved to a different position. Some commentators saw it as a sign the White House is preparing to use tax as a political tool.

• Elon Musk acknowledged during his Oval Office jag that he isn’t always truthful. A reporter confronted him with his claim that $50 million in condoms were sent to Gaza, when in fact it was a program in Mozambique meant to prevent the spread of HIV. Musk responded, “First of all, some of the things I say will be incorrect.” That didn’t come as a surprise to FEMA employees who were fired after he made claims that weren’t true about the use of disaster relief funds.

• Trump also went on the attack against FEMA

• Doctors for America filed a lawsuit because the administration has taken down CDC, NIH, and FDA websites doctors use regularly when treating and diagnosing patients. A federal judge entered a temporary injunction ordering the government to restore the public health web pages by midnight Tuesday. Perhaps suspicious of whether the government would comply, the judge ordered them to update him by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday.

• Christian and Jewish groups filed a lawsuit together, arguing that ICE's new policy of making arrests at their places of worship violates the First Amendment. They asked the courts for an injunction to stop the intrusions.

• The American Bar Association issued a statement condemning Trump’s violations of the rule of law, including this, “No American can be proud of a govt that carries out change in this way. Neither can these actions be rationalized by discussion of past grievances or appeals to efficiency. Everything can be more efficient, but adherence to the rule of law is paramount.”

• Reporting surfaced that Kash Patel, who told the Senate under oath that he was leaving his revenge lists behind, wasn’t candid.

• Fox News ran this headline: “GOP lawmakers set sights on PBS, NPR amid Trump's DOGE crackdown.” The piece goes explains, “Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., is leading a bill in the House of Representatives that would halt taxpayer dollars from going to either media broadcaster and reroute existing federal funds to reducing the national debt, according to legislative text previewed by Fox News Digital.” If they wanted to reduce the national debt, the should have just kept Democrats in charge. Instead, they’re killing the news.

• Russ Vought, folks. He’s one of the architects of Project 2025, which calls for NIH to be gutted. Now, as the head of OMB he’ll be involved in the plan to devastate research sponsored by the agency, even though his own kid, who has cystic fibrosis, benefits from one of the “miracle drugs” its research has made possible.

That's a lot, but it’s also still just a slice of everything that’s going on. And that’s the point: who could pay attention to everything?

It’s important that we understand that and recognize the effort to overwhelm us. They want us to give up. They want us to resign ourselves to the inevitability of whatever Trump is going to do for the next four years. That, of course, is what we can’t do. This is the time to summon our moral outrage, call it the coup that it is, and make sure we don’t let up on our senators, representatives, or even the White House; we have to continue to express our concerns and our outrage.

Lest you think it doesn’t work, following the public outcry over the weekend after the vice president seemed to suggest that the administration should flout judges’ orders if they lost in court, three Republican Senators went to bat for the rule of law. Josh Hawley said the president doesn’t have the power to defy the courts. That might seem like civics 101, but in today’s context, it was critical for him to say it. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley chimed in to say that he had “learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed his belief that the courts play an important role in the balance of power between the branches of government. These aren’t folks who tend to make statements like this—ones that cut against the leader of their party—just for fun. It was a response to the alarm bells we raised. So, let’s keep going. Don’t let the crazy overwhelm you.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

'Enraging': Republicans ‘suddenly’ see disinformation problem amid hurricane crisis

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