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.
Republicans are very unhappy that lower courts keep ruling against the Trump administration. How dare the courts stand in the way of President Donald Trump doing whatever he wants?
Unfortunately for the GOP, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough threw out the provision designed to make it nearly impossible for plaintiffs to sue the federal government.
Because conservatives no longer believe in the separation of powers, they’ve floated eliminating lower courts entirely and begged the Supreme Court to block lower courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.
They’re furious that courts keep ruling against Trump, and it seems to have never crossed their minds to contemplate why that is. It can’t be that Trump is wildly exceeding his power and destroying the government, so it must be that the judges are in cahoots to deny Trump his rightful authority.
GOP senators approached this in a different—but no less anti-democratic—way. They attempted to include a provision in the budget bill that would have barred lower courts from issuing a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction against the federal government unless plaintiffs posted a bond. The bond would have to cover whatever the federal government said were its costs and damages resulting from not being allowed to do what it wanted.
On major policies, like stripping birthright citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Americans, the government could argue that its costs and damages ran into the billions due to its deportations being thwarted. It’s explicitly designed to make it more difficult for individuals and nonprofit groups to sue the government or to obtain nationwide relief.
At least for now, the Senate isn’t going to get its way, as MacDonough ruled that this provision violated the Byrd Rule, which limits provisions in reconciliation bills to only those with a budgetary effect.
But never fear: Republicans will keep trying to ensure that nothing stands in Trump’s way—not even the federal courts.
“Can you tell me how a bunch of allergy researchers are going to violate national security by using their time at work for collective bargaining?”
That’s U.S. District Judge James Donato, talking about the absurdity of Trump’s executive order intended to strip union protections from more than 1 million federal employees.
The pretense Trump used here was to say that more than 40 agencies primarily functioned as national security organizations and were therefore exempt from the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act. But that list included agencies that obviously don’t have national security as their primary function, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Donato blocked the order, saying that there’s a serious question about whether the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of federal employees by retaliating against them for their protected speech.
Donato’s ruling points out that Trump’s executive order literally admits to that behavior. Trump complained of “hostile Federal unions” who have “declared war on President Trump’s agenda” and that he “will not tolerate” unions that oppose him.
Donato also noted that Trump’s order could chill the speech of federal employees, as they may “feel pressure to conform to the administration’s political views” or risk retaliation.
For the moment, Trump is barred from enforcing the order and cutting union protections. But who knows what will happen when this eventually ends up at the Supreme Court, which is busy giving Trump everything he wants by blocking lower court rulings.
At least someone will go after SpaceX when its rockets explode
Not in the United States, though.
Both Texas and the federal government seem to be standing aside whenever one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets explodes in spectacular fashion, no matter what damage they cause.
A 2023 explosion resulted in a cloud of concrete covering Port Isabel, Texas, a 3.5-acre fire, and chunks of metal and concrete dropped thousands of feet from the launch site. And a 2024 launch destroyed the nests of shorebirds and dumped thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater nearby.
The environmental destruction of SpaceX doesn’t magically stop at the border, which is why the Mexican government is considering pursuing legal action for the garbage that SpaceX is spewing across Mexico’s northern border.
Both the May 27 and June 19 SpaceX explosions dropped debris and microplastics over Tamaulipas, a northern border state in Mexico. The debris eventually made its way to marine areas, where environmental activists say it caused a die-off of fish, dolphins, and sea turtles.
It’s unclear what legal action against SpaceX would look like, though it is very clear that Musk will go scorched earth on any litigation. But at least someone is going to try to rein him in.
Trump’s DOJ intervenes on the side of child abuse
Calling it an “anti-Catholic law,” the Department of Justice sued to join Catholic bishops in their suit against Washington state, which has a newly passed law that requires priests to disclose child abuse even if they learned about it in a confessional.
There certainly is a credible argument about whether this intrudes on religious practices, but not from the Trump administration, which has framed itself as the guardian of children’s safety. In practice, that seems to only apply to attacking schools that don’t sufficiently humiliate trans kids.
Indeed, Trump’s April proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month boasts of how he’s protecting children by “prohibiting public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology.” He’s also taken “historic action” to secure the southern border and end child trafficking. But it’s not at all clear how those actions actually address child abuse.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration withdrew funding from investigating child sexual abuse, internet crimes against minors, and reports of missing children. The DOJ also removed grant applications, despite having plenty of funds, for services like helping local police investigate child exploitation on the internet and paying for court-appointed advocates for abused children.
The DOJ didn’t intervene in this case because it feels strongly about child abuse. It didn’t even really intervene to preserve the sanctity of the confessional—though that’s its ostensible reason.
The DOJ is in this case because it wants to advance a theocratic worldview—to keep carving out protections for conservative Christians and conservative Christians alone. And, hey, if that means that children endure abuse because priests keep quiet, that’s just the cost of doing religious business.
Texas loves passing laws that violate the Constitution
It really, really does.
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a requirement that every classroom display a poster of at least 16 inches by 20 inches with the text of the Ten Commandments.
Texas knew full well that this would be challenged because it’s blatantly unconstitutional. A group of faith leaders and families sued the day after Abbott signed the bill, saying that it violates the separation of church and state.
The plaintiffs also pointed out that there are multiple translations and interpretations of the Ten Commandments, so even if one were totally down with forcing that into the classroom, there’s still the problem of which version would be used.
Texas also knew full well that this would be challenged because the incredibly conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Texas, held that a similar Louisiana law was unconstitutional just last week.
What Texas is hoping for here is something like what happened with its so-called “Heartbeat Bill,” which banned all abortions after a heartbeat could be detected—around 6 weeks—and created a bounty hunter system where anyone could sue someone who “aided and abetted” someone getting an abortion.
This law openly violated Roe v. Wade, which held that the government could not ban abortion before viability, which is around 24 weeks, but the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect anyway. Then, the court took up Dobbs v. Jackson over Mississippi’s 15-week ban, which also deliberately violated the viability requirement. The court used that to overturn Roe.
Texas is gambling that the Supreme Court is now stuffed with enough religious theocrats who may very well be perfectly happy to force children to look at the Ten Commandments every day, all while explaining that this somehow doesn’t violate the First Amendment.
It’s not a bad gamble for Texas, but it’s terrible for the rest of us.