Fareed’s Take: The modern presidents wield authority far beyond anything the founders envisioned
The modern presidents wield authority far beyond anything the founders envisioned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCd0Wx4-ap4
Tag: courts
The Failure of Russian Capitalism With Bill Browder
Russia’s privatization after the Cold War, failed partially because the Russian government was too weak. It could not enforce property rights and the rule of law. Instead, the government was corrupted by the oligarchs. When Putin took over, he exchanged many oligarchs for one–himself.
When the U.S. tries to deregulate for potentially good reasons, and avoids taxes, we need to be careful that we are not setting up our own oligarchs who avoid helpful taxes and regulations at the expense of the people.
https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/the-failure-of-russian-capitalism-with-bill-browder
Judge orders Trump administration to pay full SNAP benefits
“A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday.
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“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/06/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-pay-full-snap-benefits-00640627
The Mysterious Gun Study That’s Advancing Gun Rights
The Supreme Court has used a doubtful gun study funded by a Second Amendment advocacy group to justify its decisions. The author has not published the study, has not shared the data, refuses to talk to anyone about it, refuses to testify in court about it, and one lawsuit dropped the reference to the study because he refused to testify. How the survey was represented was inaccurate compared to the actual survey questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI5ev8TWAR0
Judge extends order barring mass firings of federal workers during shutdown
“A federal judge has indefinitely extended her order banning the Trump administration from mass firing federal employees during the government shutdown.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/government-shutdown-federal-workers-rifs-ruling-00626042
Woman Acquitted of Assaulting FBI Agent After 3 Grand Juries Declined To Indict
“In August, President Donald Trump took over the police force in Washington, D.C., and flooded the city with officers from various federal agencies. As part of this show of force, federal agents arrested hundreds of people, while prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia—led by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro—seemingly intended to throw the book at them, whether or not the punishment actually fit the crime.
This week, one of the administration’s more high-profile cases crashed and burned at trial.
In July, according to a charging document, D.C. resident Sydney Reid filmed with her phone as agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took two people into custody from the city jail. When one ICE officer told Reid to move back, she “continued to move closer to the officers and continued to record the arrest.” When she didn’t reply to further commands, an officer pushed her against the wall, and FBI Agent Eugenia Bates stepped in to assist as Reid “was flailing her arms and kicking and had to be pinned against a cement wall.” During the scuffle, the indictment claims Reid “forcefully pushed [Bates’] hand against the cement wall” and “caused lacerations,” and it includes a picture of her hand with two red marks.
Reid was arrested for “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” federal officers, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. But when prosecutors presented the case, a grand jury declined to indict—not once or even twice, but three separate times.
This is not unique to Reid: In August, the same month, prosecutors also failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Sean Dunn, the Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer stationed in D.C. In fact, within three weeks of Trump’s D.C. takeover, grand juries declined to return indictments at least seven times.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/17/woman-acquitted-of-assaulting-fbi-agent-after-3-grand-juries-declined-to-indict/
On National Guard Deployments, Trump Tells SCOTUS His Power Is ‘Unreviewable’
“Federal law says the president of the United States may only call state National Guard members “into Federal service” when certain specific conditions are met, such as when “there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against” the federal government, or when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
According to President Donald Trump, he alone gets to decide when or if such conditions exist. Or, as Trump recently argued in a legal filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, “such decisions are committed to the discretion of the President and are unreviewable” by the federal courts.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/21/on-national-guard-deployments-trump-tells-scotus-his-power-is-unreviewable/
What the Japanese Internment Case Teaches About Judicial Deference to Presidential Power
“this supposed civil libertarian also wrote the majority opinion upholding concentration camps for innocent American citizens. And Black did not even express any public regret over his Korematsu ruling in the decades to come. “It is noteworthy,” the legal scholar Stanley Kutner once observed, “that in an interview shortly before his death, Justice Black maintained that both the President and the Court had been right in their wartime actions.”
According to Black, the outcome in Korematsu was dictated by the existence of emergency conditions and the resulting judicial deference owed to the executive branch. “The military authorities considered the need for action was great, and time was short,” Black declared. “We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.”
Writing in dissent, Justice Frank Murphy, another Roosevelt appointee and ardent New Dealer, argued that the president’s actions were, in fact, clearly unjustified at the time he took them. “It is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared,” Murphy wrote. “Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support.””
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/what-the-japanese-internment-case-teaches-about-judicial-deference-to-presidential-power/
Appeals court backs Trump’s National Guard deployment in Portland
““In Portland, protests have endured for months, and the [Portland police have] been either unwilling or unable to respond to the disturbances,” the appeals judges wrote.
Nelson and Bade said Immergut relied too heavily on Trump’s social media commentary — calling Portland “war ravaged” — to conclude that his deployment was “untethered” from reality, noting that the unrest had required a surge of law enforcement from the Federal Protective Service to contain.
The 9th Circuit panel majority repeatedly cited a similar decision issued by three colleagues permitting Trump’s deployment of Guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this year. In the ruling, the judges said Trump is owed great deference in determining whether civil unrest reaches a point in which the military may be called in for support.
The majority said Immergut used a faulty definition of rebellion in her decision, but the appeals judges did not address whether Trump had a valid claim that such unrest was underway when he sent in the Guard. (They did say they were not endorsing Trump’s description of Portland as a “war zone.”)
The appeals panel’s dissenting judge, Clinton appointee Susan Graber, called the majority’s decision ”absurd,” pleaded with her 9th Circuit colleagues to quickly reverse it and urged the public to “retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”
“We have come to expect a dose of political theater in the political branches, drama designed to rally the base or to rile or intimidate political opponents. We also may expect there a measure of bending—sometimes breaking—the truth,” Graber wrote. “By design of the Founders, the judicial branch stands apart. We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda.”
Graber emphasized that even though there had been unruly protests in Portland in June, they had largely subsided and by September routinely featured 30 or fewer demonstrators and virtually no violence or requests for local police assistance.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/20/national-guard-deployment-oregon-ruling-00615660
Is the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket Causing a ‘Judicial Crisis’?
“Why does Trump keep winning these preliminary emergency requests before SCOTUS? Unfortunately, we do not always know why because the Court does not always say why. Many of these emergency orders—which critics often call the shadow docket—are issued without an accompanying opinion that explains the Supreme Court’s thinking.
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As The New York Times put it, “more than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”
Moreover, according to the same Times article, it is not just liberal judges doing the complaining
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Whenever the Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to issue this sort of emergency order in its favor, the justices are basically forced to grapple with the following questions: Is it better in a particular case to let the president carry out his contested agenda right away? Or is it better in a particular case to keep the president’s contested agenda on a temporary pause while the courts—after full briefing and arguments, including oral arguments before SCOTUS—have determined that the agenda does in fact pass constitutional or statutory muster?
The Supreme Court’s current majority does seem to think that it is generally better to let Trump’s agenda speed ahead. But even if that pro-executive approach is the correct one—which is a pretty big if—the majority is not doing itself any favors by keeping its pro-executive reasoning to itself.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/14/is-the-supreme-courts-shadow-docket-causing-a-judicial-crisis/?nab=1