Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump’s threatened tariffs on Brazil for them prosecuting a former president for crimes he appears to have committed have appeared to backfire as the current president is getting a polling bump from Trump’s unjustified threats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bowcbk9W50A
“A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Education Department to fire almost 40 percent of its workforce four months after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to begin closing down the department.
The justices, by an apparent 6-3 vote announced Monday, lifted an injunction a federal judge in Boston granted in May against the firings. That judge found that the staff cuts were so drastic they would prevent the department from carrying out duties mandated by Congress. He also said the mass firings appeared to be part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department entirely, despite a lack of congressional authorization to do so.
…
The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision, but all three liberal justices joined a 19-page dissent that accused the court’s conservative majority of favoring the Trump administration when considering emergency appeals.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
…
The majority stressed in that decision that the high court was not giving its legal blessing to any specific plan to downsize any particular agency. But now it appears to have done just that with the Education Department.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/supreme-court-education-department-ruling-00452134
“It has been several months since the first major law firm brokered a deal with Trump to get out from under an executive order penalizing the firm for conducting work or hiring lawyers that the White House disfavors. Eight firms followed that precedent in order to avoid becoming targeted themselves, ultimately committing a combined total of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services to largely unspecified initiatives supported by the Trump administration. Four firms refused to buckle and successfully challenged the orders targeting them in federal district court in Washington, D.C.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/10/trump-law-firms-deals-mess-column-00445259
“In 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which prohibited operating or hosting “a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)” within the United States. The law required TikTok to find a buyer by January 19, 2025, or else shut down operations within the United States.
Ultimately, neither happened…Trump issued the executive order on his first day, “instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today.” He has since issued two additional orders further extending the deadline
…
“But no president has the authority to simply postpone the enforcement of a law passed by Congress. The fact that Congress seems content to let Trump decline to enforce it does not obviate the law itself. And for that reason, if Congress will not repeal the law, then it should insist Trump enforce it.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/07/either-repeal-or-enforce-but-ideally-repeal-the-tiktok-ban/
“”Due process is the most foundational legal principle protecting individual liberty in Western civilization. It dates back to the Magna Carta,” Bolick observed. Yet “we have seen the words due process appear in quotes repeatedly, as if this concept was created by rogue liberal judges to help illegal immigrants stay in the country.””
…
“Bolick is a principled legal thinker and one of the genuine good guys in American law. If he is worried about the health of our constitutional order, we should all pay heed.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/08/the-republican-appointed-judge-decrying-trumps-deeply-disturbing-attacks-on-the-rule-of-law/
“However the 9th Circuit ultimately comes down on that question, any decision addressing the legal merits of Newsom’s argument will amount to a rejection of the Trump administration’s alarming position that the president has the authority to deploy National Guard troops at will, even without pretending to meet statutory requirements or citing any facts to support his decision. That argument would transform the National Guard, today’s version of the state militia, into a federal force that the president can use at his discretion, without regard to constraints imposed by Congress or the 10th Amendment.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/18/trump-argues-that-he-can-take-over-a-states-national-guard-whenever-he-feels-like-it/
If fired for appropriately investigating the president or his allies, then this is a great degradation of the rule of law. The U.S. cannot call itself a strong democracy when administrations can punish people for proper legal investigations. Future prosecutors and investigators will have to think twice before investigating any potential crimes by Trump or his friends.
“At least three federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals.
A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were “removed from federal service effective immediately.” No reason for the removal was stated in the letter.”…”The Trump administration in late January fired probationary federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump. The administration also demoted some career prosecutors who worked on the Capitol siege investigation.Probationary workers are either recent hires or have taken new positions.The firings on Friday, though, marked the first time that career prosecutors who had worked Jan. 6 cases and who were past their probationary period of federal employment had been fired.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pam-bondi-fires-two-jan-225031625.html
“Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of President Donald Trump’s crusade against international students he describes as “terrorist sympathizers,” was released from custody on Friday after more than three months of detention. But the Trump administration is still trying to deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on his participation in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
The official rationale for expelling Khalil is that he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. That justification is alarmingly broad and vague, raising due process and free speech concerns that interact with each other.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/25/the-rationale-for-deporting-mahmoud-khalil-is-alarmingly-vague-and-broad/
“Given that Congress wasn’t consulted about Trump’s weekend strikes on Iran either (more on that in a bit), the administration’s “we’re not at war” insistences allow it to pretend it’s not completely ignoring the Constitution.”
…
“Nevertheless, Republican Congressional leaders have cheered on Trump’s unconstitutional attack on Iran. Most rank-and-file Republicans have offered support as well, with a few notable exceptions like Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who got roasted by Trump on Truth Social for his trouble.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/23/just-dont-call-it-a-war/
“Government employees, including law enforcement officers, generally don’t have the presumption of privacy when it comes to information such as their names, salaries, and business conducted in public. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped police and politicians from accusing people of “doxxing” officers for releasing public information.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/06/marsha-blackburn-wants-secret-police/