DC Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Boasberg
The ruling was 2-1:
The J.G.G. v. Trump case has already made its way up to the Supreme Court once, and while the case is still working its way through the courts on the merits, there’s been a contemporaneous contempt proceeding, in which Judge Boasberg has been assessing whether he’d hold certain members of the Trump administration in criminal contempt over its actions following his order to effectively turn the planes (already in transit to El Salvador) around.
In connection with that, the administration sought a writ of mandamus from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, essentially asking that Boasberg’s contempt inquisition be shut down. On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit granted the writ and halted the district court’s ongoing contempt investigation into the administration’s March deportation flights, blocking further testimony and fact-finding aimed at determining whether officials defied a temporary restraining order.
The majority ruled that the Boasberg court abused its discretion, by continuing the proceedings despite SCOTUS having ruled that the original suit was brought under the wrong legal reasoning and in the wrong court. Continuing on with contempt proceedings meant that Boasberg was abusing his court’s discretion and also making an attempt to impair the executive branch in its constitutional duties.
When I read that the decision was 2-1, I immediately wondered about the political breakdown of the judges. Sure enough, two were Trump appointees and the dissent was written by an Obama appointee. No surprise. Next there might be a request for a hearing en banc (the larger panel) and that could go quite differently.
The Biden appointees are the worst, followed by Obama’s. How the GOP let these creeps in is beyond me.
bill fello (6:54 pm), choose between collegiality and fecklessness.
Why these knuckleheads fancy that their collegiality will be reciprocated is beyond my meager comprehension capacity.
(And their lack of reciprocity will take place at the most critical legislative junctures.)
@ M J R > “choose between collegiality and fecklessness.”
You could add a third choice – complicity.
Many judges on the bench were put there with the assent of the same group of Republicans who discovered that Trump was going to kick over their rice bowls
(e.g., Bulwark et al.; National Review Never Trump edition 2016).
That includes some of the still-sitting Congress critters who can’t seem to get up any enthusiasm for encoding the reforms supported by their constituents.
So long as we can predict a court decision by looking at who appointed the judges, we don’t have rule by law.
Biasborg.
(Indefatigable champion of the “Trump delenda est” crowd…and Transformational Political Grammar.)
I completely agree that complicity is a major factor with some GOP Senate pushovers. They want the courts to tie down conservative and nationalist and traditionalist moves. It predates Trump, though. This same tendency was visible all the way back to Reagan.
That way they can tell their constituents: “We really tried, but the courts just won’t let us! But we can still pass a free trade bill!”
Others I think honestly just don’t get the issue. This group was recruited to run by business groups, is motivated by business issues, and are barely aware of the other considerations.
This is the kind of Senator (or Congressman) who asks, sincerely, “What does any of that have to do with tax cuts and labor costs?”
Nothing glazes my eyes over faster than reading law. Yet one like me would think a written law shouldn’t need to be determined, it should be cut and dry what it means. Seems that isn’t the case and hasn’t been for a long time.
I’ve often wondered who could curb and/or remove Boasberg from the bench.
So, can Congress Impeach him, or will higher courts just have to keep reversing his rulings and diktats?