#who are the ones filing the lawsuits challenging trump's actions

[aibidil]

Trump administration not following court orders—what now?

If you're not paying too close attention to what's happening in the US government right now (good for you, we all need to protect our mental states), the important thing to know right now is:

Federal courts are working overtime to halt Trump's illegal executive orders and the actions of Trump/Musk. There have been multiple court orders to stop him.

This is how the system is supposed to work. Check out these updates from the NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson, one of the democratic attorneys general doing god's work right now:

But now we come to the fun (not fun) part: the Trump admin isn't following the court orders. This is simply not something presidents do. One article I read said it hasn't happened since the Civil War. So what happens now?

Example: Trump ordered a spending freeze on federal grants. A federal judge ruled on January 29 that Trump can't simply stop the dispursal of funds that Congress has already authorized. (In the US, Congress has the sole constitutional authority to authorize spending, and these funds have already been approved.) In the ruling, the judge ordered Trump to release the funds. Weeks have passed and the funds haven't been released. Yesterday (Feb 10, 2025), the judge issued a follow-up ruling ordering Trump to comply with his previous ruling. The judge didn't find the administration in contempt of court—which is likely the next step—but stated unequivocally that they were not following his order of January 29 despite it being within their power to do so.

Even before this ruling, Vice President Vance (ew I can't believe I just typed that) ominously posted on Twitter:

The fact that he's wrong (it's the basic checks and balances American kids learn in civics, and it's Marbury v Madison) is unimportant. What's important is that he's setting the stage for the Trump admin to deny that the courts can constrain their actions.

This is the "constitutional crisis" people keep referring to. The law/Constitution means nothing if it's ignored. And when it's ignored, it's the job of the courts to call that out and issue orders to stop the unlawful/unconstitutional action. But if they don't listen to the orders..... What next? There's no clear answer. It doesn't seem likely that the military will enforce the federal courts' orders against Trump, does it?

This is such a breakdown of the rule of law that the American Bar Association issued this statement yesterday:

[trans-axolotl]

"Much ink has already been spilled on Harris’s prosecutorial background. What is significant about the topic of sex work is how recently the vice president–elect’s actions contradicted her alleged views. During her tenure as AG, she led a campaign to shut down Backpage, a classified advertising website frequently used by sex workers, calling it “the world’s top online brothel” in 2016 and claiming that the site made “millions of dollars from trafficking.” While Backpage did make millions off of sex work ads, its “adult services” listings offered a safer and more transparent platform for sex workers and their clients to conduct consensual transactions than had historically been available. Harris’s grandiose mischaracterization led to a Senate investigation, and the shuttering of the site by the FBI in 2018.

“Backpage being gone has devastated our community,” said Andrews. The platform allowed sex workers to work more safely: They were able to vet clients and promote their services online. “It’s very heartbreaking to see the fallout,” said dominatrix Yevgeniya Ivanyutenko. “A lot of people lost their ability to safely make a living. A lot of people were forced to go on the street or do other things that they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.” M.F. Akynos, the founder and executive director of the Black Sex Worker Collective, thinks Harris should “apologize to the community. She needs to admit that she really fucked up with Backpage, and really ruined a lot of people’s lives.”

After Harris became a senator, she cosponsored the now-infamous Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which—along with the House’s Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—was signed into law by President Trump in 2018. FOSTA-SESTA created a loophole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so-called “safe harbor” provision that allows websites to be free from liability for user-generated content (e.g., Amazon reviews, Craigslist ads). The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that Section 230 is the backbone of the Internet, calling it “the most important law protecting internet free speech.” Now, website publishers are liable if third parties post sex-work ads on their platforms.

That spelled the end of any number of platforms—mostly famously Craigslist’s “personal encounters” section—that sex workers used to vet prospective clients, leaving an already vulnerable workforce even more exposed. (The Woodhull Freedom Foundation has filed a lawsuit challenging FOSTA on First Amendment grounds; in January 2020, it won an appeal in D.C.’s district court).

“I sent a bunch of stats [to Harris and Senator Diane Feinstein] about decriminalization and how much SESTA-FOSTA would hurt American sex workers and open them up to violence,” said Cara (a pseudonym), who was working as a sex worker in the San Francisco and a member of SWOP when the bill passed. Both senators ignored her.

The bill both demonstrably harmed sex workers and failed to drop sex trafficking. “Within one month of FOSTA’s enactment, 13 sex workers were reported missing, and two were dead from suicide,” wrote Lura Chamberlain in her Fordham Law Review article “FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost.” “Sex workers operating independently faced a tremendous and immediate uptick in unwanted solicitation from individuals offering or demanding to traffic them. Numerous others were raped, assaulted, and rendered homeless or unable to feed their children.” A 2020 survey of the effects of FOSTA-SESTA found that “99% of online respondents reported that this law does not make them feel safer” and 80.61 percent “say they are now facing difficulties advertising their services.” "

-What Sex Workers Want Kamala Harris to Know by Hallie Liberman

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Reuters, via The Guardian:

A swath of Democratic-led states and civil rights groups have filed the first lawsuits challenging executive orders Donald Trump signed after taking office, including one that seeks to roll back birthright citizenship in the US. A coalition of 22 Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston on Tuesday arguing the Republican president’s effort to end birthright citizenship is a flagrant violation of the US constitution.

That lawsuit followed a pair of similar cases filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant organizations and an expectant mother in the hours after Trump signed the executive order, marking the first major litigation challenging parts of his agenda since he took office. “State attorneys general have been preparing for illegal actions like this one, and today’s immediate lawsuit sends a clear message to the Trump administration that we will stand up for our residents and their basic constitutional rights,” the New Jersey attorney general, Matthew Platkin, said in a statement. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuits, which were all filed in federal courts in Boston or Concord, New Hampshire, take aim at a central piece of Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, an order directing federal agencies not to recognize US citizenship for children born in the United States to mothers who are in the country illegally or are present temporarily, such as visa holders, and whose fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents.

More lawsuits by Democratic-led states and advocacy groups challenging other aspects of Trump’s agenda are expected, with cases already on file challenging the Elon Musk-led, ill-defined “department of government efficiency” and an order the Republican signed weakening job protections for civil servants. Any rulings from judges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire would be reviewed by the Boston-based 1st US circuit court of appeals, whose five active federal judges are all appointees of Democratic presidents, a rarity nationally. The complaints cite the US supreme court’s 1898 ruling in United States v Wong Kim Ark, a decision holding that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship. If allowed to stand, Trump’s order would mean more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States would be denied for the first time the right to citizenship, according to the office of the Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell.

22 Democratic AGs, DC, and the city of San Francisco, CA sue over 47’s tyrannical and unconstitutional executive order ending birthright citizenship.

[black-fist-order]

A Dallas lawyer has come up with a unique way that courts could stop President Donald Trump’s whirlwind of executive action.

David Coale wrote in Salon Saturday that judges buried under multiple court orders challenging a flood of legally dubious executive actions could take a tactic usually reserved for extreme time wasters.

It would, he said, deal with Trump’s suggestion that, whichever way courts rule, his administration could just ignore them — and the judiciary would effectively be powerless to enforce it.

Coale gives the example of a “jailhouse lawyer” — such as a prisoner serving a life sentence in prison who fights his sentence by filing a multitude of frivolous lawsuits.

Judges, Coale argues, can cut through the time-wasting by ruling the filer is a “vexatious litigant” — and dismissing their claims out of hand.

The same could be done to the president's administration, Coale claimed.

“What if the judiciary treated the federal government itself as a vexatious litigant?” he asked.

“Imagine courts refusing to hear broad categories of cases where the United States is a party until the executive branch obeys court orders. The agencies and departments that make up the federal government rely heavily on the courts to enforce contracts, prosecute criminal cases, and otherwise resolve a sprawling range of disputes about the operation of government.

“A refusal to entertain some — or most — cases from an Administration that disrespects judicial authority would be a drastic but forceful step—and far more effective than imposing fines that will likely not be paid.”

The action, he said, would be like judges declaring they were on strike when it came to government business before them.

"The functional equivalent of a “judicial strike” is a radical idea without precedent,” he wrote.

“But so is an administration openly contemplating the defiance of court orders. … If court orders can be ignored without meaningful consequence, then courts will be losing cases anyway — and the most impactful ones, where the Constitution’s limits on executive power are at issue.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Democrats and grassroots activists gain traction

February 5, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Democrats and grassroots activists worked for a second day to oppose the unfolding coup against the Constitution by Musk and Trump. Activists held protests across the nation. Legal advocacy organizations partnered with aggrieved federal workers to file lawsuits, and federal judges issued orders halting unconstitutional executive orders signed by Trump. Democrats in Congress claimed they had placed a hold on all Trump nominees (although 22 Democrats voted for VA Secretary Doug Collins, and Senator John Fetterman voted to confirm Pam Bondi).

In short, there were positive signs that should inspire confidence among those who care about democracy and our Constitution.

Even so, the Musk / Trump efforts to overthrow the Constitution and destroy the federal government continued to creep across the land like a deadly virus.

We cannot relent. We cannot ease up. We cannot normalize or minimize what is happening by describing the unconstitutional efforts as “controversial,” “disruptive,” or “illegal.” Two men—one elected and one unelected—have arrogated to themselves the power to override Congress and ignore the Constitution. If that scenario took place in any other country in the world, we would call it a coup. Our reluctant legacy media continues to bow and scrape before Trump and Musk, hiding behind euphemisms and restraint in the face of a national emergency.

Three notable exceptions are Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Musk/Trump coup will not be televised and Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, Elon Musk’s Power Grab Is Lawless, Dangerous, and—Yes—a Coup.

Will Bunch writes,

A hostile takeover of the government by folks who weren’t elected . . . is the classic definition of a coup.

Stern and Lithwick write,

An elected leader who illegally entrenches his own power, as Trump did four years ago, is engaged in a self-coup. . . . What do we call it when the president is too lazy to gut the government himself, giving away power to a zealous and unaccountable friend? Call it a double-self-coup . . . .

We are facing a constitutional crisis like no other in living memory. The first step is to recognize the threat for what it is: A coup designed to sunder the Constitution by installing the president as the unbounded ruler of America.

The Founders fought a revolutionary war to overthrow a monarch. Trump and Musk are seeking to undo the outcome of the American Revolution. That should alarm every American.

There is much to cover from Tuesday. I will endeavor to make sense of the many developments by grouping them into the following broad categories:

Protests

Lawsuits

Additional unconstitutional actions by Musk / Trump

Trump's comments on Gaza

Protests

Treasury Department

For the second day, protesters gathered outside the US Treasury Building in Washington D.C. The Tuesday event was coordinated by MoveOn and Indivisible. See MSN, Protesters Hold 'Nobody Elected Elon' Rally Outside Treasury Building.

Dozens of members of Congress showed up at the event—a sign that Democrats in Congress are paying attention to their constituents. A delegation of Democratic representatives and senators were denied entrance to the Treasury Building. See Axios, Congressional Democrats denied entry to Treasury Department

Dozens of readers sent photos of the protest. (Thanks to everyone who sent photos and video—I received hundreds!)

A smaller group of concerned citizens attempted to visit Senator Schuck Schumer’s office but were turned away. They then held an impromptu demonstration in front of his office building. See photos below.

An organic, national protest is planned for February 5 with the goal of holding protests in every state capitol building. See Newsweek, What Is the '50 States' Anti-Trump Protest Movement? What to Know About 50501. The short notice is a challenge. The planned protest times are included in the Newsweek article.

If you are within driving distance of your state capitol, please make an effort to show up! Protests must start somewhere, so don’t fret if the initial demonstrations are small(ish). The point is that people are finding their voices, which is good!

The National Women’s March is organizing a weekly Moment of Silence at 12:53 pm to mark the time when January 6 insurrectionists broke through the barricades at the US Capitol. See Not the Bee, Women's March announces "weekly minute of silence" on Wednesdays at 12:53, "the moment January 6th rioters first crossed the barricades".

If you would like to promote other protests, please post the details in the Comment section or “reply” to this email with the details. Change the subject line to “Protest Details.”

Lawsuits

FBI lawsuits.

Legal advocacy groups continued to file suits against the Trump administration, seeking to obtain injunctions against illegal executive orders.

Two suits on behalf of FBI agents were filed on Tuesday. NBC News, FBI agents sue Justice Department, alleging 'retribution' over their work on Jan. 6 cases.

Per NBC, in one suit, nine FBI agents argue that the specific purpose of an internal FBI survey "is to identify agents and other FBI personnel to be terminated as a form of politically motivated retribution.”

The suit seeks to represent a class of 6,000 current and former FBI agents who are on the list that has been provided by the FBI to the DOJ identifying those agents.

Per NBC, the second suit requests

“protection” from the Justice Department’s “anticipated retaliatory decision to expose their personal information for opprobrium and potential vigilante action by those who they were investigating.”

Federal employees sue over alleged “buyout offer.”

See The Hill, Union sues over Trump buyout offer. (“The largest federal government employee union is suing the Trump administration to block its buyouts for workers, calling the offer “an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.”)

Order prohibiting the transfer of transgender inmates to men’s prison

A federal judge issued an order enjoining the transfer of three transgender inmates from women’s prison facilities to men’s prisons. See CNN, Judge blocks federal prison system from moving three transgender women to men’s prisons

Additional unconstitutional acts

The coup by Trump and Musk continued at full steam despite court orders and assurances by administration officials claiming that “There is nothing to see here, move along.”

Musk’s hacking into Treasury payments system.

Secretary of Treasury Bessent told lawmakers in a private meeting that Musk has not gained access to payments by the Treasury—despite Musk’s boasts to the contrary on Twitter. As Josh Marshall explains, there is strong reason to doubt Bessent’s denials. See Talking Points Memo, Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base.

Marshall writes,

I’m told that . . . DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team . . . . has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.

If you can’t trust assurances from the Secretary of the Treasury, who can you trust? Not Secretary of State Rubio! Read on!

USAID effectively shut down

Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that the Trump administration plans to reorganize USAID, Trump has effectively shuttered the agency by placing nearly every employee on administrative leave. See NBC News, USAID announces nearly all direct hires will be placed on administrative leave.

Trump cannot legally terminate the USAID as an agency or impound funds appropriated by Congress to USAID programs. He is attempting to circumvent those legal and constitutional prohibitions by effectively firing the entire workforce.

Consumer Finance Protection Board ordered to cease work

The CFPB is a congressionally created agency that cannot be terminated by Trump. So, Trump appointed Treasury Secretary Bessent as the new CFPB head, who immediately ordered the CFPB to cease work. See NPR, New CFPB head, Scott Bessent, orders staff to halt work.

Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, is a hedge fund manager who is no friend to consumers. Not surprisingly, major banks cheered Bessent’s appointment to the consumer protection bureau and urged the immediate repeal of pesky regulations that protect the banking industry’s customers from unscrupulous practices. (See NPR article, above.)

Trump moves to shut down Department of Education

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that appears to pave the way to shutter the Department of Education. Although the executive order recognizes that Trump cannot eliminate an agency created by Congress, he will likely use the same tactic deployed against USAID and the CFPB—order the workforce to take administrative leave, thereby suspending all work. See Newsweek, Trump Moves To Dismantle Department of Education With New Order.

Again, Trump has no authority to prevent the disbursement of funds allocated by Congress to assist local educational programs and students with disabilities. If Trump places the DOE into suspended animation, millions of families with disabled children will be thrown into ruinous financial hardship and chaos.

Trump targets the CIA.

Trump has sent a “buyout” offer to the entire CIA workforce. See CNN, CIA sends ‘buyout’ offers to entire workforce.

To state the obvious, a mass departure from the CIA would inflict grievous harm on US national security. Other deferred resignation letters have suggested that mass layoffs are imminent. If the same applies to the CIA, Putin must be popping Champagne in the Kremlin.

Trump moves to reclassify chief technology officers in agencies

Until now, the chief information officers in charge of technology at federal agencies have been civil service employees who are selected on technical merit, not political persuasion.

Trump will change that rule on February 14. After that date, chief information officers will be political appointees because, you know, what really matters in creating a stable computer network is where your political loyalties lie, not what education, experience, and skills you possess. See NBC News, Trump admin moves to make tech officials appointees amid DOGE clashes

Trump's comments regarding Gaza

During a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump made comments regarding Gaza that were simultaneously bizarre, offensive, and destabilizing. Trump suggested that:

Two million Palestinians in Gaza should be forced to emigrate to Arab countries (Trump said, “I don’t think they are going to tell me no.”)

The US would take control of Gaza

The US would develop Gaza as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

The context and details of Trump's remarks are here: NYTimes, Trump Proposes U.S. Takeover of Gaza and Says All Palestinians Should Leave. (Accessible to all.)

Saudi Arabia and representatives of Palestinians in Gaza issued statements condemning the proposals. As noted in the NYTimes article, Trump's proposals may imperil the second stage of hostage releases in the current cease fire. Trump's recklessness may have condemned the remaining hostages to additional time in captivity.

Concluding Thoughts

Okay, that was a lot to digest. But keep this in mind: Not everything that Trump and Musk have announced will actually occur or will be easy to implement. And we will have time to resist, fight back, slow walk, and seek injunctive relief from the courts. We can blunt some of the damage but cannot prevent it all. Still, we must do our best to protect as many people and programs as possible.

Despite the challenging outlook, we must push back forcefully. Trump and Musk have overreached; the damage will soon appear on national news and local newspapers. Tales of hardship and unfairness will be shared in church basements and grocery stores. The damage will be felt on farms and in small businesses, at colleges and primary schools, in hospitals and police stations.

Sadly and inevitably, Trump's mass firings and politicization of the federal government's information technology infrastructure will lead to technical disasters. Per the Talking Points Memo, above, Musk’s engineers are placing “backdoors” into federal agency computer systems, weakening their defenses against cyber-attacks from foreign adversaries.

All of this will backfire sooner or later. Just like Trump's ridiculous comments about Gaza. His ignorance and impulsiveness will be his undoing—and that of the GOP. It will be painful for us, so we must be prepared. There is a reason that Democrats are holding town hall meetings with constituents, but Republicans are not. Republicans fear the growing public concern about Trump's slash-and-burn approach that will hurt millions of Americans without regard to political party.

We must be tough, steeling ourselves for rough times ahead. But we must also be proactive in planning to leverage Trump's mistakes to our advantage.

Don’t give up. Don’t look away. Endure. Abide. Keep the faith. If we can do that, we will prevail. It is only a matter for time.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[pintadorartist]

KEEP UP THE PRESSURE: CONTINUE TO FIGHT AGAINST THE TRUMP-MUSK COUP

I'll start with the Bad news since there's a lot of it here:

*Although all of the Democrats voted no, By a margin of 53-47, Russel Vought, one of the leading Architects behind Project 2025, has been confirmed

*Musk's Coup is still ongoing:

*Despite the mounting privacy lawsuits, His DOGE group has gotten access to the NOAA, Department of Labor, and Department of Education, EPA, and the Department of Health and Human Services

*USAID, the foreign aid agency of the US that provided life-saving funding for education, medicine, healthcare, and other foreign aid has been shuttered; it's been absorbed into the State Department with Marco Rubio acting as head of the agency with entire agency's numbers slashed from their original 10,000 to only 300 employees

*As of writing this post, Democrats from the House have been unable to communicate with the heads of the EPA and DOE(Department of Education)

*Even after asserting their credentials, Democrat legislators were denied access and even had federal authorities called on them

Ok, here's is some Good news to help ease you:

*19 Democratic attorneys general sued President Donald Trump on Friday to stop Elon Musk’s "Agency" from accessing Treasury Department records that contained sensitive personal data such as Social Security and account numbers for millions of Americans.

*Thanks to everyone calling so much, the Democrats actually woke up and held up the Senate floor all night, buying time for lawsuits. This led to a judge issuing an order preventing Elon Musk and any additional DOGE-connected people from accessing sensitive Treasury data while the lawsuit proceeds to a two-week hearing.

*The judge’s order restricts two Musk-connected men already housed at Treasury to “read-only” access — meaning they are not permitted to modify or copy anything.

*In response to the gutting of USAID and the firing of its employees, a legal challenge filed on behalf of the employees, the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia will issue a temporary restraining order regarding various aspects of the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to shutter the operations of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

*A California Student group is suing the Department of Education over reported DOGE access to financial aid databases

JUST TO REMIND YOU. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE FIGHTING TO STOP THIS COUP AND FIGHTING FOR YOUR RIGHTS. HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1.Call your Senator/Rep Using 5calls: https://5calls.org/issue/elon-musk-opm-gsa-takeover/

Alongside using the script that 5calls provides, mention these actions. Despite Democrats being the minority, they still have tools and options to resist and oppose

If your senator/rep is a Republican, give them as much shit as possible, they are complicit and are willingly giving up Congress' power and responsibility.

2. Contact your State Attorney General by using 5 Calls: https://5calls.org/issue/musk-doge-data-lawsuit/

Here's an alternative script:

By using 5 calls, you probably already know who your State Attorney General is; another way to reach your AG is by searching their name, going to their website, and filing a Complaint form,

3. Contact the Secretary of the Treasury Department! – 202-622-2000

Minimal script for Secretary Scott Bessent: I’m calling to demand that you remove Musk’s access from all systems under your control, that all his equipment is confiscated, that his team is interrogated as to all actions they took under his direction, and that a computer forensics team is assigned immediately to check the system for integrity of its security systems.

After doing all of these, spread this around, not just on Tumblr, but all over the place. People need to know what's going on

and Remember, Do not obey in advance; yes, these are scary times; it's okay to feel afraid, but do not let it paralyze you; you are not alone.

More info on: https://indivisibleventura.org/2025/02/01/the-guy-nobody-trusts-with-a-full-security-clearance-now-has-access-to-all-your-private-data/

[democracyunderground]

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order bringing independent agencies under the control of the White House — an action that would greatly expand his power but is likely to attract significant legal challenges.

It represents Trump’s latest attempt to consolidate power beyond boundaries other presidents have observed and to test the so-called unitary executive theory, which states that the president has the sole authority over the executive branch. And it reflects the influence of Russ Vought, Trump’s budget chief, one of several conservatives in his orbit who have called for axing independent arms of the executive branch.

The theory was long considered fringe, and many mainstream legal scholars still believe it is illegal, given that Congress set the agencies up specifically to act independently, or semi-independently, from the president. These include the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which enact regulations and can impose hefty fines on businesses that violate the rules.

Other presidents have not only declined to challenge the independence of these agencies in court, but have in many cases tried to avoid even the appearance of interference in their actions. Many leaders appointed to the agencies serve terms that last longer than a single presidency, in an effort to help shield them from political pressure.

The order would take that independence away by granting Vought, who reports to Trump, supervising power.

The executive order requires Vought, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to “establish performance standards and management objectives” for the heads of independent agencies and “report periodically to the President on their performance and efficiency in attaining such standards and objectives.” It also requires Vought to review and make changes to the agencies’ budgets “as necessary and appropriate, to advance the President’s policies and priorities.”

“For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President,” the executive order states.

While the executive order is sweeping in nature and represents a fundamental reshaping of the federal government, it effectively codifies actions the Trump administration has already been taking, setting up the administration’s legal position in an expected court fight. Trump has, for instance, already fired Gwynne Wilcox, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, and Office of Government Ethics Director David Huitema. Wilcox has filed a lawsuit contesting her dismissal.

And Vought, almost immediately upon taking office, assumed the title of acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, another independent agency, halting further funding to the agency and firing its employees en masse.

But the order has broad — and potentially immediate — implications for a host of other independent agencies that have not yet been penetrated by the administration. And while it doesn’t apply to the Federal Reserve’s handling of monetary policy, it does apply to the Fed’s other responsibilities, including overseeing banks and other financial institutions.

Independent agencies often find themselves in the political crosshairs, either because they take actions that appear to align or conflict with a sitting president’s agenda. Those include the SEC’s efforts during the Biden era to force companies to disclose the risks they face from climate change, as well as the FCC’s more recent actions to investigate companies such as CBS for alleged bias against Trump during the 2024 campaign.

Under the order, independent agencies must appoint White House liaisons and “regularly consult with and coordinate policies and priorities” with not only Vought’s office but the White House Domestic Policy Council and National Economic Council.

It also neuters the agencies’ attorneys by asserting that “no employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law.”

Trump had made less dramatic intrusions into independent agencies’ power during his first term, including by pressuring both the FTC and FCC to punish social media networks accused of censoring conservatives — including himself.

In one episode that made headlines, Trump met with then-FTC Chair Joseph Simons in the White House and pushed him to take action on the censorship allegations, as POLITICO reported in August 2020. Simons had told lawmakers he considered the matter outside the agency’s jurisdiction.

Trump also stunned lawmakers that year by withdrawing the renomination of Republican FCC member Michael O’Rielly, who had expressed skepticism about using his agency’s powers to penalize online platforms for alleged ideological bias.

“I shudder to think of a day in which the Fairness Doctrine could be reincarnated for the internet, especially at the ironic behest of so-called free speech ‘defenders,’” O’Rielly said in a speech a few days before Trump pulled the plug on him.

The GOP-held Senate swiftly confirmed Trump’s replacement for O’Rielly, fellow Republican Nathan Simington.

In contrast, former President Barack Obama faced complaints from Republicans when he took actions that appeared to blur the lines between White House policy and the agencies’ decision-making. Those included Obama recording a video message in 2014 to urge his FCC chair to adopt strong net neutrality regulations, as well as a 2011 White House visit by Obama’s FTC chair on the same day that senior Google officials — whose company was under an antitrust investigation — were on the premises.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Democracy Docket

Marc Elias

Wednesday, February 5

Senate confirms Pam Bondi as attorney general

The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general last night. Her record as an election denier and loyalist of President Donald Trump raises serious concerns over her ability to uphold justice, protect democracy and lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Building youth engagement in democracy goes beyond voting

The future of democracy relies on more than just young people voting. From voter education to community building, the youth's commitment to civic engagement is what will ultimately drive positive change, IGNITE National fellow Grace Edwards argued in a new piece.

We're currently tracking 23 lawsuits holding Trump accountable — with new developments happening quickly. If you know someone who wants to stay informed on these important updates, forward them this newsletter to ensure they're in the know.

THE OPPOSITION

Holding Trump Accountable

Federal unions sue DOGE over Department of Labor data access

Federal unions, represented by Democracy Forward, sued today to block Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing sensitive Department of Labor data. This marks the latest lawsuit against the faux agency for attempting to unlawfully obtain government information.

Judge issues nationwide block on Trump’s birthright citizenship order

A federal judge in Maryland issued a nationwide block today on Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship as litigation continues, saying it "conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment."

Trump’s firing of NLRB member is being challenged in court

Gwynne Wilcox, who Trump fired from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filed a lawsuit challenging her dismissal. She said the termination violated the National Labor Relations Act, which says NLRB members can only be fired for negligence or malfeasance after proper notice and the right to a hearing.

Hearings coming up tomorrow

A Washington state court is set to hear a lawsuit challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. Democratic attorneys general in four states argued that the order violates the 14th Amendment. This is one of nine lawsuits challenging this order.

A hearing will be held in two lawsuits from FBI agents seeking to block the U.S. Department of Justice from creating a list of staff who worked on Trump's Jan. 6 cases. FBI employees argue that these actions violate the U.S. Constitution.

A hearing is scheduled in a Democracy Forward case challenging the Office of Personnel Management’s “Fork in the Road” directive giving federal government workers the option to resign by tomorrow but be paid until September. The plaintiffs argued it’s the “pretext for removing federal workers on an ideological basis.”

This is a daily newsletter that provides a quick and easy rundown of the voting and democracy news of the day. For questions about your subscription or general support, visit our FAQ page here.

[beardedmrbean]

Four years after launching a push for more diversity in its ranks, McDonald’s is ending some of its diversity practices, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.

McDonald's is the latest big company to shift its tactics in the wake of the 2023 ruling and a conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Walmart, John Deere, Harley-Davidson and others rolled back their DEI initiatives last year.

McDonald's said Monday it will retire specific goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels. It also intends to end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop diversity training and to increase the number of minority group members represented within their own leadership ranks.

McDonald's said it will also pause “external surveys." The burger giant didn't elaborate, but several other companies, including Lowe's and Ford Motor Co., suspended their participation in an annual survey by the Human Rights Campaign that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.

McDonald's, which has its headquarters in Chicago, rolled out a series of diversity initiatives in 2021 after a spate of sexual harassment lawsuits filed by employees and a lawsuit alleging discrimination brought by a group of Black former McDonald's franchise owners.

“As a world-leading brand that considers inclusion one of our core values, we will accept nothing less than real, measurable progress in our efforts to lead with empathy, treat people with dignity and respect, and seek out diverse points of view to drive better decision-making,” McDonald's Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.

But McDonald’s said Monday that the “shifting legal landscape” after the Supreme Court decision and the actions of other corporations caused it to take a hard look at its own policies.

A shifting political landscape may also have played a role. President-elect Donald Trump is a vocal opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Trump tapped Stephen Miller, a former adviser who leads a group called America First Legal that has aggressively challenged corporate DEI policies,as his incoming deputy chief of policy.

Vice President-elect JD Vance introduced a bill in the Senate last summer to end such programs in the federal government.

Robby Starbuck, a conservative political commentator who has threatened consumer boycotts of prominent consumer brands that don't retreat from their diversity programs, said Monday on X that he recently told McDonald's he would be doing a story on its “woke policies.”

McDonald's said it had been considering updates to its policies for several months and planned to time the announcement to the start of this year.

In an open letter to employees and franchisees, McDonald's senior leadership team said it remains committed to inclusion and believes a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage. The company said 30% of its U.S. leaders are members of underrepresented groups, up from 29% in 2021. McDonald's previously committed to reaching 35% by the end of this year.

McDonald's said it has achieved one of the goals it announced in 2021: gender pay equity at all levels of the company. It also said it met three years early a goal of having 25% of total supplier spending go to diverse-owned businesses.

McDonald’s said it would continue to support efforts that ensure a diverse base of employees, suppliers and franchisees, but its diversity team will now be referred to as the Global Inclusion Team. The company said it would also continue to report its demographic information.

The McDonald's Hispanic Owner-Operators Association said it had no comment on the policy change Monday. A message seeking comment was left with the National Black McDonald's Operators Association.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Anne D’Innocenzio

Published: Nov 26, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same after coming under attack by conservative activists.

The changes, confirmed by Walmart on Monday, are sweeping and include everything from not renewing a five-year commitment for an equity racial center set up in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, to pulling out of a prominent gay rights index. And when it comes to race or gender, Walmart won’t be giving priority treatment to suppliers.

Walmart’s moves underscore the increasing pressure faced by corporate America as it continues to navigate the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 ending affirmative action in college admissions. Emboldened by that decision, conservative groups have filed lawsuits making similar arguments about corporations, targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups.

Separately, conservative political commentator and activist Robby Starbuck has been going after corporate DEI policies, calling out individual companies on the social media platform X. Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s and Tractor Supply.

But Walmart, which employs 1.6 million workers in the U.S., is the largest one to do so.

“This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America,” Starbuck wrote on X, adding that he had been in conversation with Walmart.

Walmart confirmed to The Associated Press that it will better monitor its third-party marketplace items to make sure they don’t feature sexual and transgender products aimed at minors. That would include chest binders intended for youth who are going through a gender change, the company said.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer will also be reviewing grants to Pride events to make sure it is not financially supporting sexualized content that may be unsuitable for kids. For example, the company wants to makes sure a family pavilion is not next to a drag show at a Pride event, the company said.

Additionally, Walmart will no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts. The company said it didn’t have quotas and will not do so going forward. It won’t be gathering demographic data when determining financing eligibility for those grants.

Walmart also said it wouldn’t renew a racial equity center that was established through a five-year, $100 million philanthropic commitment from the company with a mandate to, according to its website, “address the root causes of gaps in outcomes experienced by Black and African American people in education, health, finance and criminal justice systems.”

And it would stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual benchmark index that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.

“We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the company said in a statement.

The changes come soon after an election win by former President Donald Trump, who has criticized DEI initiatives and surrounded himself with conservatives who hold similar views, including his former adviser Stephen Miller, who leads a group called America First Legal that has challenged corporate DEI policies. Trump named Miller to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration.

A Walmart spokesperson said some of its policy changes have been in progress for a while. For example, it has been moving away from using the word DEI in job titles and communications and started to use the word “belonging.” It also started making changes to its supplier program in the aftermath of the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling.

Some have been urging companies to stick with their DEI policies. Last month, a group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000, saying that DEI efforts give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American dream.

--

==

Excellent news. As the big ones go, so too will the smaller ones.

It's so weird that "don't discriminate based on skin color," "don't discriminate based on sex," and "don't give kids porn" are being called "conservative" values. Five minutes ago, these were obvious and uncontroversial liberal values.

What this is, is secularism. That your beliefs are for you and not me. You don't get to impose your beliefs onto others. If you subscribe to the beliefs of the woke cult, that's fine and your business. But you don't get to force others to believe them, pretend to believe them, or make them comply with them. Any more than a Xian can force others to pray, or a Muslim can demand ham and bacon be removed from the company cafeteria.

Which means that within the context of a company, the company itself has and pushes no particular beliefs. Because it leaves people the hell alone.

[ausetkmt]

SpaceX and Amazon are among the companies that have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.

In the nearly four years that Joe Biden has been president, the National Labor Relations Board has taken an assertive — some say overly aggressive — approach to protecting workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain.

Now, SpaceX and Amazon are at the forefront of a corporate-led effort to monumentally change the labor agency. On Monday, attorneys for the two companies will try to convince a panel of judges at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the labor agency, created by Congress in 1935, is unconstitutional.

Their lawsuits are among more than two dozen challenges brought by companies who say the NLRB's structure gives it unchecked power to shape and enforce labor law.

A ruling in favor of the companies could make it much harder for workers to form unions and take collective action in pursuit of better wages and working conditions.

That would be an enormous setback for labor groups, who have enjoyed unprecedented support from the Biden administration, and a win for companies that have spent considerable amounts of resources over the past four years trying to keep unions out of their workplaces.

Complicating matters is the fact that President-elect Donald Trump has named SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to co-lead a new commission focused on dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing spending and jobs. Whether the NLRB is one of the agencies Musk will advise on remains unclear.

Ultimately, these cases could make their way to the Supreme Court.

Board found fault at Amazon and Space X

The lawsuits brought by Amazon and SpaceX came after the NLRB issued complaints of its own. Agency investigations found the companies had violated the rights of their employees.

At Amazon, the issue was the company's refusal to collectively bargain with the Amazon Labor Union. Workers at Amazon's Staten Island, N.Y., warehouse voted to unionize in 2022.

At SpaceX, the complaint involved eight employees who said they were fired in retaliation for speaking critically of Musk.

Both companies argue that the labor agency's structure violates the separation of powers.

"The NLRB routinely exercises authority to prosecute alleged violators of federal labor law, define the legal standards that govern the prosecutions, and weigh the facts necessary to find a violation — with only limited judicial review by Article III courts," attorneys for SpaceX wrote in a court filing.

The companies also find fault with the president's inability to fire NLRB board members, who serve five-year terms, and in SpaceX's case, its administrative law judges.

Additionally, they argue the NLRB's system for adjudicating cases denies them the right to a trial by jury.

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, sits at agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 13, 2022. Amanda Andrade-Rhoades

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, calls the lawsuits a distraction, pointing to the agency's 90-year history of governing labor-management relations.

"We are trying to hold violators of our statute accountable," she said at the National Press Club in October. "It would be chaos if the agency was not allowed to perform its functions and do it properly."

Anticipating a slowdown in enforcement

Workers' advocates are bracing for a slowdown in labor law enforcement in a second Trump administration.

For starters, Trump is expected to fire Abruzzo immediately, exercising power he does hold. (Biden fired Trump's appointee to that position on his first day in office.)

Since 2021, Abruzzo, who acts as the NLRB's prosecutor, has taken a broad view of the protections labor law offers private-sector employees. She has worked to remove barriers to organizing, most recently winning a board ruling outlawing "captive audience" meetings, or mandatory meetings at which employers try to dissuade workers from unionizing.

Trump is expected to replace Abruzzo with someone friendly to employers, who will set a new tone for enforcement. Last time around, Trump's pick for the job was Peter Robb, a management-side labor attorney who served as lead counsel for President Ronald Reagan during the air traffic controllers' strike.

In the SpaceX and Amazon cases, all expectations are that a Trump-appointed general counsel will not fight any ruling favorable to the companies. However, similar lawsuits filed elsewhere in the country could result in conflicting court decisions.

[moontyger]

Elon Musk’s dream comes true: The federal board that protects workers does not exist, at least for now | CNN Business

The National Labor Relations Board, the independent agency that is supposed to enforce labor laws for most American workers, has been essentially shut down after President Donald Trump fired one of its board members, leaving it without the quorum it needs to function.

The NLRB oversees elections to form unions and also investigates complaints about unfair labor practices, such as firing workers for supporting unions. Of the five-seat board, two members’ seats were open because their terms expired.

President Trump’s unprecedented firing of a third board member has now left the NLRB without even the ability to form the simple majority needed for votes, effectively leaving it moribund.

“This is great for employers — they have a nonfunctioning NLRB,” said Cathy Creighton, an NLRB attorney during the Clinton administration and the director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations co-lab in Buffalo, New York.

Formed 90 years ago, the NLRB was crucial to the growth of private sector unions in the middle of the last century.

But more recently it has overseen the decline of union representation at US businesses, as its enforcement powers have been limited by conservative courts and members of Congress eager to please businesses.

Despite its limitations, the agency had become a thorn in the side of some of the richest and most powerful people in the nation — notably Elon Musk, Trump’s key supporter both financially and arguably politically.

With Trump effectively dismantling the board, its limited powers have become — at least temporarily — non-existent.

The lack of a quorum at NLRB, and Trump’s actions to fire those he sees as anti-employer, has labor advocates particularly worried.

Critics of the move blame Musk for the action, pointing out this was not a tactic Trump used in his first term.

“The NLRB has got to be right at the top of his list for what agency Musk wants to destroy,” said Adam Shah, director of national policy at Jobs With Justice, a labor rights organization.

While Musk hasn’t taken credit, he took action even before the 2024 election to try to cripple the agency.

Musk’s SpaceX brought a case to federal court last year that argued the NLRB’s structure was unconstitutional and shouldn’t be allowed to act on unfair labor practice complaints. The SpaceX suit was an attempt to block the agency from moving against it for firing some employees. Nine SpaceX workers complained they were dismissed for writing management a letter asking them to publicly condemn Musk’s “harmful” behavior on social media. Musk’s Tesla has faced NLRB complaints about its treatment of unionizing efforts there as well, including after Musk tweeted that if employees joined a union they would lose their stock options.

Neither SpaceX nor Tesla responded to a request for comment.

“It wasn’t Trump that filed the lawsuit against the board challenging its constitutionality,” said Shah. “It was Elon Musk.”

And it’s not just Musk who has fought the agency in court. Amazon in recent years has also sued over the existence of the NLRB with the e-commerce giant still fighting the results of a union representation vote it lost in 2022 — the first time workers at one of its facilities voted to join a union.

What it means when the board can’t act

The board has not responded to questions about whether the Trump administration intends to appoint the board members needed to have at least a three-member panel. In a statement to CNN, the NLRB said it still has regional directors and investigators looking at complaints of unfair labor practices during labor disputes.

But without a board able to act, employers don’t have to worry about labor laws being enforced, even if agency investigators and judges find violations.

For example, at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, a union lost two votes to represent workers. But an NLRB administrative judge found that Amazon violated laws requiring a free and fair election during the second vote, and ordered a third round of voting.

But since Amazon is challenging that finding, the matter was set to be considered by the full board, which could have set a date for a new vote. Without a quorum, Amazon doesn’t need to worry about facing a new vote.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Mattathias Schwartz

Feb. 10, 2025

A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate.

The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued on Jan. 29.

That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance with” it. 

Judge McConnell’s ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis.

“It’s very rare for a president not to comply with an order,” said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who served during the Obama and Biden administrations. “This is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn’t have.”

But for some of President Trump’s allies, it is the judges ruling against Mr. Trump who are out of bounds.

“Activist judges must stop illegally meddling with the President’s Article II powers,” wrote Mike Davis, who heads the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group.

Already, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration challenging Mr. Trump’s brazen moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk’s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. Judges have already ruled that many of these executive actions may violate existing statutes.

Judge McConnell previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that demanded that billions of dollars in federal grants be held back until they were determined to comply with President Trump’s priorities, including with ideological litmus tests.

On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects and transportation infrastructure, allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was exempt from the initial order because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit.

Judge McConnell’s ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument. 

The judge granted the attorneys generals’ request for a “motion for enforcement” — essentially a nudge. It did not find that the Trump administration was in contempt of court or specify any penalties for failing to comply.

However, the judge was straightforward in his finding that an initial temporary restraining order that he issued Jan. 29 was not being followed.

“These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the T.R.O.,” Judge McConnell wrote. That earlier ruling ordered the administration not to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” money that had already been allocated by Congress to the states to pay for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services.

It was still not clear how the White House would respond. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, suggested the president would ultimately prevail in court.

“Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful,” he said. “Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people.”

But Judge McConnell made clear that White House officials were obligated to comply regardless of how they thought the case might conclude. In his ruling on Monday, the judge quoted an opinion from a previous case noting that “persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.” 

The showdown is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s opponents to get congressionally approved funding flowing again. Another order requiring that the disputed funds be released was issued last Monday by Judge Loren AliKhan of the District of Columbia. That case was filed by a coalition of nonprofits represented by Democracy Forward. 

Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s chief executive, said that if there were to be a standoff between the executive and judicial branches, she hoped that the legislative branch would step in. 

“That is really a call to action for Congress,” she said. “The judicial branch is not going to be able to stop this unlawful and extreme use of executive power on its own.”

[mariacallous]

“Money is accountability,” announced Stephen Shackelford, a lawyer for the voting machine company Dominion, moments after a Delaware superior court judge announced that the company had settled its lawsuit against Fox News. The case was set to be a blockbuster defamation trial, a challenge to the many lies told on Fox after the 2020 election about Dominion’s supposed role in stealing a second term from President Trump. But in the end, the parties chose to settle just before opening statements were set to begin. Fox ultimately agreed to pay $787.5 million, a hefty fraction of the $1.6 billion that Dominion originally sought in damages and one of the largest defamation payouts ever reported in the United States. In a statement, Fox said, “We acknowledge the Court’s ruling finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

For many onlookers who were hoping to see Fox hauled over the coals in court for its election lies, news of the settlement was a disappointment. All the same, the pretrial discovery process allowed Dominion to make public an extraordinary amount of damaging information about Fox’s operations and the mechanics of the Big Lie of 2020 election fraud. And there are other cases yet to come. Dominion v. Fox is best understood not on its own, but as the most prominent example so far of a trend toward using defamation litigation to counter election lies—and what the case has and hasn’t achieved along those lines speaks to both the promise and the limitations of this strategy.

The Big Lie cohered over the weeks and months around the election. It was stitched together out of an enormous number of smaller lies about the actions of specific companies and individuals, which Trump and his allies used as fuel for their larger claims. As the Jan. 6 committee documented, Rudy Giuliani and others seized on video of ballots being counted in Fulton County, Georgia, as evidence of misconduct—accusing election worker Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of rigging the vote. Eric Coomer, an employee of Dominion Voting Systems, received a deluge of threats after a right-wing podcaster falsely claimed he had schemed with “Antifa” to prevent Trump from winning the election. 

Along with another voting technology company, Smartmatic, Dominion quickly became a major villain on the right. Standing alongside Giuliani at a now-notorious press conference, Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell falsely claimed that both companies “were created in Venezuela at the direction of [former president] Hugo Chávez” and were involved in a scheme to interfere with American elections. On Nov. 8, 2020, the day after news networks declared Joe Biden the president-elect, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo invited Powell on her show to discuss how Dominion was “flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.” As Trump continued to insist that he had actually triumphed in the election in the following weeks, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and Fox hosts Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity continued giving airtime and credibility to the conspiracy theory. 

Dominion alleges that they did so as part of an editorial decision by Fox to feed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. In Dominion’s telling, Fox faced a backlash from its viewers—and in particular its most powerful viewer, Trump—after calling Arizona for Biden on election night. Meanwhile, other far-right networks like One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax continued to peddle claims of election fraud. In an effort to win back its viewers from competitors like Newsmax, Dominion argued in its motion for summary judgment, Fox decided to commit to selling election lies, “caring more about protecting its own falling viewership than about the truth.”

Dominion filed its first defamation lawsuit—against Sidney Powell—on Jan. 8, 2021, just two days after the insurrection. It was a few weeks behind Eric Coomer, who on Dec. 22, 2022, sued Giuliani, Powell, the Trump campaign, and a number of right-wing media personalities, networks, and publications for spreading lies about him.

Over the rest of 2021, the lawsuits poured in. Separately, both Dominion and Smartmatic filed cases in both state and federal court against Fox News Network and Fox Corporation, as well as the far-right networks Newsmax and OAN and a suite of other television hosts and election deniers. Coomer docketed a second lawsuit against a conservative talk show host who, he alleged, continued to spread lies about Coomer’s supposed involvement in interfering in the 2020 election. Moss and Freeman, the Georgia election workers, sued Giuliani, OAN, and the right-wing website The Gateway Pundit. A Pennsylvania postmaster who had been the target of lies over his supposed role in stealing the election filed suit against the conservative media organization Project Veritas for amplifying the allegations.

As defamation cases go, these are unusual. Traditionally, defamation litigation, particularly against the press, has often been a tool used by the powerful to silence their critics. This was the Supreme Court’s rationale in Sullivan for requiring plaintiffs to clear the high bar of showing “actual malice” on the part of the defendant: The Court objected to “the possibility that a good faith critic of government will be penalized for his criticism,” writing that such an idea “strikes at the very center of the constitutionally protected area of free expression.” When Americans think of defamation litigation in connection with preserving democracy, they often think of the importance of defending journalists or members of the public from defamation suits meant to shut them up. 

But the post-2020 slate of defamation cases invert this pattern. Here, the plaintiffs often position themselves as defending democracy from falsehoods. “One thing our cases have in common is that they are on behalf of people who’ve been targeted for participating in the basic functioning of our democracy,” Sara Chimene-Weiss, counsel with the group Protect Democracy, told me in an interview. Protect Democracy represents Moss and Freeman along with the Pennsylvania postmaster, Robert Weisenbach, and is also representing Mark Andrews, a Florida voter suing over his portrayal as an illegal “ballot mule” in the conspiratorial film 2000 Mules. (Full disclosure: Protect Democracy has represented Lawfare editors in certain FOIA and other matters unrelated to defamation.) Chimene-Weiss went on, “It’s essential for democracy that we protect the right to participate in free and fair elections, without fear of consequences.” 

Dominion has leaned into this framing as well. In a statement released after the announcement of the settlement, company CEO John Poulos thanked “the election officials we serve,” saying, “Without them there is no democracy, and they work tirelessly to that end and deserve much better.” 

In positioning these cases as battles for democracy, advocates focus not only on the need to defend the electoral process but also on litigation as a tool for countering falsehoods. “The truth matters. Lies have consequences,” said Dominion attorney Justin Nelson in the post-settlement press conference. Likewise, Protect Democracy attorney John Langford told NPR in March 2022, “We can’t have a functioning democracy if we don’t have a shared understanding of facts. And we can’t have a shared understanding of facts if there’s a universe of groups out there that are intentionally, willfully or recklessly spreading lies about things like the legitimacy of elections or important public facts that are critical to public debate.” 

The run-up to the Dominion trial saw a great deal of rhetoric around the courtroom as a space uniquely suited to cut through the noise and get to the truth—a place well-suited, perhaps, to responding to the Big Lie in a way that other forums may not be. “It appears that disinformation itself is on trial,” said media law professor Jonathan Peters in the Washington Post. In a March 2022 interview, Dominion lawyer Rodney Smolla told the New York Times that defamation law is “one of the few legal avenues in which civilized countries have attempted to distinguish between truth and falsity.”

These cases are also unusual in the sheer strength—and volume—of the evidence marshaled by the plaintiffs. The Sullivan standard of “actual malice” is a difficult one to meet: In cases involving alleged defamation of a public figure, the plaintiff must show that the defendant either knew the statement in question was false or made it “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” For that reason, relatively few defamation cases make it to trial. But in almost all of the post-2020 suits, judges have denied defendants’ motions to dismiss—the first major hurdle at which the litigation might have fallen. These cases tend to center not on a single comment or article but instead on an extensive story of falsehoods told over and over again, in many instances after the defendant was told that the information in question was dubious or outright untrue. 

During the pretrial discovery process, Dominion unearthed an enormous amount of material damaging to Fox. The documents, which received extensive attention in the press, showed Fox hosts, producers, and leadership repeatedly expressing doubts about the conspiracy theories around Dominion—before the network went on to air more of those claims anyway. They also underline just how flimsy the evidence supporting those theories turned out to be: One of the strangest documents uncovered in discovery is an email that appears to be the source of the claim that Dominion was involved in a conspiracy to flip votes from Trump to Biden, which was sent to Sidney Powell—and forwarded by Powell to Bartiromo—by a woman who also wrote that “[t]he Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.” In news coverage of the case, defamation lawyers emphasized again and again just how unusual it was to see this detailed a record of a media organization’s awareness of potential falsehoods. The evidence was “incredibly damning,” Sonja R. West, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Georgia law school, told the Washington Post.

On the strength of this evidence, the judge in Dominion’s case handed the company a major victory on March 31, finding in a ruling on both parties’ motions for summary judgment that Dominion had shown Fox to have broadcast lies. Using both italic and bold font for emphasis, the judge wrote, “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” Such a ruling in a defamation case is extremely rare and left for the jury only the question of whether Fox had acted with “actual malice” as well as the matter of damages incurred by Dominion. 

For this reason, in the run-up to the beginning of the trial—and what turned out to be the settlement—Fox was playing with an unusually weak hand. It’s not hugely surprising that the company chose to settle. 

Dominion CEO Poulos commented in his statement that “we have sought accountability and believe the evidence brought to light through this case underscores the consequences of spreading and endorsing lies.” Even in the absence of a trial, it’s worth underlining just how significant the discovery material released by Dominion was: Media reporter Brian Stelter, one of the closest observers of Fox and the author of a book on the network, wrote in The Atlantic that the documents brought him a new understanding of Fox’s pathologies. That forcible transparency is worth taking seriously as a victory.

The other defamation cases have notched wins as well. Georgia election workers Moss and Freeman reached a settlement with OAN, which according to the Wall Street Journal involved an agreement by the network to air a segment explaining to viewers that the two women “did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct.” Newsmax published an apology and retraction of its coverage of Eric Coomer following his suit against the network. 

And there is real reason to think that the threat of litigation could dissuade future lies. In fact, there’s reason to think that it may already have done so. Fox canceled Lou Dobbs’s show—which pursued 2020 conspiracy theories with particular enthusiasm—immediately after Smartmatic filed its suit against the network. OAN has lost much of its audience after being dropped by both Verizon and DirecTV. Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing media personality who produced and starred in the film 2000 Mules, complained on Twitter that Fox News and Newsmax had declined to bring him on air to discuss the movie. D’Souza’s book on the same subject was briefly recalled by its publisher and had incendiary and potentially libelous language removed. It’s also noteworthy that the 2022 election saw far fewer of the kind of targeted lies that characterized the environment around the 2020 election—suggesting that news organizations that might have been interested in broadcasting such claims might have been deterred. 

At the same time, the frustration around the Dominion settlement is a reminder of the limitations of defamation law as a tool for cutting through lies. The nature of a defamation lawsuit is that it requires an individualized injury to a particular plaintiff, and that plaintiff’s interests will often be best served by the certainty of a settlement rather than the gamble of a trial. Despite its victory in the judge’s ruling on summary judgment, Dominion faced plenty of hurdles in proving actual malice. It was also far from certain that the company would be able to secure a hefty payout. The incentives cut in favor of Dominion taking a settlement, even though a trial might have served an important public function. 

And this will continue to be true in other defamation cases. Defamation law “often meets its narrow aim of compensating the defamed party for its reputational injury without serving the broader, more amorphous goal of unringing the bell, let alone correcting a lie circulating in society,” law professors RonNell Andersen Jones and Lyrissa Lidsky write. Along those lines, reporting suggests that the settlement will not require Fox to admit or apologize to spreading false claims about Dominion. “Defamation suits can be a tool in the disinformation battle but are never going to be the full solution,” Andersen Jones told me over email after the settlement was announced. 

What’s more, there’s no guarantee that news of victories against lies in court will travel to the audiences that most need to hear it. The right-wing media has largely been silent on the matter of the Fox case—and in at least one instance, the outlet The Gateway Pundit misrepresented a filing in the Dominion litigation as actually providing evidence of 2020 election fraud. After news of the Dominion settlement, Fox remained relatively quiet; the story about the settlement published on the network’s website is remarkably short, doesn’t mention the amount of the settlement, and provides few details about what exactly Dominion was suing over. The courts are only one institution in a larger civic ecosystem, and they can’t substitute for the larger political and cultural failures that prevent truths about the 2020 election from being communicated by trustworthy outlets to audiences, and that prevent those audiences from believing those truths. 

How much of an effect will this litigation have on Fox, in the end? Smaller outlets like Newsmax and OAN are more vulnerable to lawsuits like these, which could create genuine financial problems. But Fox is a juggernaut: According to the New York Times, the Fox Corporation “had about $4.1 billion ‘of cash and cash equivalents’ on hand at the end of last year.” And when I spoke with Andersen Jones last week, before the trial was set to begin, she emphasized that Fox’s financial incentives could well cut in the direction of continuing to air politically palatable falsehoods when its audience demanded it. “Dominion thinks that it can prove there was a conscious corporate decision to tell defamatory lies for audience share and profit,” she said. “Assuming the environment is as Dominion claims it to be, that same gravitational pull is going to continue regardless of the outcome of this case.”

But the Dominion case could do a real public service by bringing attention to that dynamic, Andersen Jones suggested. Acknowledging the problem of the demand for falsehoods, as well as the supply, “is itself really helpful in focusing our public conversations about disinformation,” she said. It helps build a more nuanced understanding of the problem of falsehoods polluting our politics and of just how complicated it will be to formulate an adequate response.

However the incentives align for Fox in the aftermath of the Dominion settlement, other plaintiffs were eager to remind the press that Dominion’s suit was only one of many and that this story of seeking accountability is far from over. The voting machine company Smartmatic, whose own lawsuit against Fox is moving forward in New York state court, made a pointed statement to reporters immediately following news of the settlement. “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” the company said. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”

[yourreddancer]

AG Kris Mayes is Fighting Back Against the Trump-Musk 'Coup' Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joins MeidasTouch to discuss efforts she is taking to fight back against Donald Trump and Elon Musk's violations of the Constitution Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network Feb 23 I had the privilege of speaking with Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who didn’t mince words: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are engaged in a full-blown attack on democracy. And while spineless Republicans in Congress refuse to stand up to them, state attorneys general are leading the fight to hold them accountable in court. Both we here at the MeidasTouch Network and our millions of viewers and listeners have demanded action. Well, attorneys general like Kris Mayes are stepping up.

At least five major lawsuits have been filed by Democratic AGs against Trump and Musk, with Arizona leading the charge. Their actions are so egregious that federal judges have already issued multiple Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs) to stop them—yet they continue to ignore court orders, pushing the country into uncharted legal and constitutional waters.

“This is a coup against our Constitution, against our way of governing ourselves,” Mayes told me. “They are violating over and over and over again… What do you do when the people running the federal government aren’t playing by the rules?”

Mayes and other Democratic attorneys general have filed lawsuits challenging some of the most egregious and unconstitutional actions of the Trump regime and Musk’s influence over the government. Among them:

Trump’s Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship – This blatant violation of the 14th Amendment is nothing more than MAGA authoritarianism, and state AGs are taking it to court.

Elon Musk’s Takeover of Government Agencies – Lawsuits are challenging Musk’s unconstitutional role in the Treasury Department and USAID, where he’s exerting influence despite never being appointed or confirmed to any position.

The Federal Funding Freeze – Trump tried to freeze federal funding to states, threatening firefighters, law enforcement, rural hospitals, and social programs like Meals on Wheels. AGs successfully won a TRO to stop it.

Trump and Musk Violating the Appointments Clause – The lawsuits argue that Musk and Trump have installed unqualified loyalists into positions of power, sidestepping the constitutional requirement for Senate confirmation.

Contempt of Court Violations – Federal judges have ordered Trump and Musk to stop their unlawful actions, but they continue violating those rulings.

And that’s just the beginning.

“We’ve never been in a more dangerous place than we are today, at least since the Civil War,” Mayes warned.

One of the biggest concerns Mayes raised was what happens when Trump and Musk outright ignore federal court rulings.

If judges hold them in contempt, will Trump just pardon his allies? Will Musk keep defying subpoenas, protected by a corrupt federal government?

Mayes made it clear: state attorneys general aren’t backing down. These cases will likely reach the Supreme Court, and when they do, the justices will have to decide whether they stand with America—or with authoritarianism.

One of the most outrageous aspects of Trump’s government is Elon Musk’s unchecked access to Americans’ personal data. Under Musk, DOGE has become into a tool for government surveillance, with teenage hackers and unqualified tech bros accessing sensitive private information.

In Arizona alone, Mayes’ office has been flooded with calls from furious citizens—Republicans, Democrats, and independents—who are outraged that their tax records, medical files, and Social Security information have been accessed by Musk’s lackeys.

Meanwhile, Musk—who is bragging about gutting government agencies—is running around at tech conferences wielding a chainsaw like some kind of deranged movie villain.

“I don’t think Elon Musk has ever used a chainsaw in his life,” Mayes said, mocking the bizarre stunt. “At the same time, what he’s doing is devastating real people’s lives.”

Here’s where the hypocrisy of Trump’s MAGA movement is on full display. While Trump and Musk rant about stopping drug cartels, their own actions are making it easier for them to operate.

The federal funding freeze that AGs fought against would have eliminated critical drug task forces working to stop fentanyl and cartel operations.

In Arizona, police just seized over 1.5 million fentanyl pills, along with meth, guns, and cash—but if Musk and Trump had their way, those operations would have been defunded.

Trump claims to want “border security,” but his reckless, unconstitutional executive orders have weakened law enforcement’s ability to do their jobs.

One of the biggest questions I get from viewers: When is Elon Musk going to be forced to speak under oath?

Mayes couldn’t reveal everything about legal strategy, but she confirmed that AGs are already working to subpoena Musk, demand documents, and expose the truth about how he’s infiltrated federal agencies.

The Appointments Clause lawsuit—which Mayes filed alongside 12 other state AGs—is the most likely case to force Musk into testifying under oath. And when that happens, his entire corrupt arrangement with Trump will finally be exposed.

The message from Mayes was clear: This is a fight for democracy itself.

And Americans are stepping up. The Democratic attorneys general are launching a nationwide town hall tour, giving people a chance to voice their anger over the corruption, lawlessness, and invasion of privacy happening under Trump and Musk.

“If your Congress member isn’t holding a town hall, demand one,” Mayes urged. “Make your voice heard. Call their offices. Let them know you’re not okay with a billionaire weirdo having access to your personal data.”

Mayes made one thing clear: Americans—regardless of party—are waking up.

Arizonans didn’t vote for a dictatorship. They voted for a better economy, a secure border, and functional government. What they’re getting instead is authoritarianism, corruption, and an all-out assault on democracy.

“We still believe in America,” Mayes said. “And we still believe in our Constitution. But we need to fight for it before it’s gone.”

Watch my full interview with AG Mayes above and consider joining us now as a paid member to keep us going.

[andreasgypsysoul2020]

A Dallas lawyer has come up with a unique way that courts could stop President Donald Trump’s whirlwind of executive action.

David Coale wrote in Salon Saturday that judges buried under multiple court orders challenging a flood of legally dubious executive actions could take a tactic usually reserved for extreme time wasters.

It would, he said, deal with Trump’s suggestion that, whichever way courts rule, his administration could just ignore them — and the judiciary would effectively be powerless to enforce it.

Coale gives the example of a “jailhouse lawyer” — such as a prisoner serving a life sentence in prison who fights his sentence by filing a multitude of frivolous lawsuits.

Judges, Coale argues, can cut through the time-wasting by ruling the filer is a “vexatious litigant” — and dismissing their claims out of hand.

The same could be done to the president's administration, Coale claimed.

“What if the judiciary treated the federal government itself as a vexatious litigant?” he asked.

“Imagine courts refusing to hear broad categories of cases where the United States is a party until the executive branch obeys court orders. The agencies and departments that make up the federal government rely heavily on the courts to enforce contracts, prosecute criminal cases, and otherwise resolve a sprawling range of disputes about the operation of government.

“A refusal to entertain some — or most — cases from an Administration that disrespects judicial authority would be a drastic but forceful step—and far more effective than imposing fines that will likely not be paid.”

The action, he said, would be like judges declaring they were on strike when it came to government business before them.

"The functional equivalent of a “judicial strike” is a radical idea without precedent,” he wrote.

“But so is an administration openly contemplating the defiance of court orders. … If court orders can be ignored without meaningful consequence, then courts will be losing cases anyway — and the most impactful ones, where the Constitution’s limits on executive power are at issue.”

#Trump #Loser