A Federal Judge Shows the Supreme Court's Reactionary Majority What Fidelity to the Law Means

The Supreme Court will almost certainly strike his ruling down, but in so doing it will lay bare its hypocrisy

Even as the Supreme Court disgraces itself with its debasing and obsequious trump-leaning rulings, lower federal court judges continue to show what fidelity to the law and the Constitution is all about.

Yesterday I posted about SCOTUS’s outrageous one-paragraph ruling allowing the trump regime to deport immigrants to countries where they might be tortured. But one of the lower court judges whose order was seemingly overturned by that ruling showed uncommon courage when he declared yesterday that his order remained “in full force and effect.”

Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts said the Supreme Court’s order did not prevent him from ruling on individual cases, in this case immigrants whom the trump regime intended to ship to war-ravaged South Sudan but who ended up getting stuck in the purgatory of Djibouti.

It turns out the Supreme Court’s failure to explain its ruling opened the door for Murphy to rule as he did. And he cited Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s powerful 19-page dissent as validation for his action.

In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote that Murphy’s orders were not properly before the Supreme Court because the trump regime had not appealed them, nor had it sought a stay pending appeal.

Naturally, Murphy’s ruling was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court by the trump regime, which, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, called it an “unprecedented defiance of this Court’s authority.”

That’s incredibly rich coming from the trump legal crew, which has brazenly and routinely defied court orders.

It’s worth noting that the man arguing that Murphy was defying the Supreme Court is the solicitor general of the United States, D. John Sauer, who used to be solicitor general of Missouri. Sauer, you may recall, represented trump in the case where he argued that presidents are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for virtually any and all of their actions. When that case went up on appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, you may also recall that one of the judges asked Sauer whether a president would be immune from criminal prosecution if he or she ordered the assassination of a political rival by SEAL Team 6. Sauer’s answer was a “qualified yes.”

Shockingly, when that case reached the Supreme Court, not only did the Republican appointees not view Sauer’s answer as the reductio ad absurdum that it was, they more or less endorsed it when they ruled, against all historical and textual evidence, that presidents are entitled to criminal immunity for their “official” acts. It was none other than Sotomayor, the conscience of the court, who, in her dissent to that abomination of a decision, described a commander-in-chief now “immune, immune, immune” from criminal liability and free to bring the full weight of official presidential power against political opponents.

“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?” she wrote. “Immune.”

I have no doubt the Supreme Court’s Republican majority will take Murphy to the woodshed and overrule him.

But for one brief shining moment, a federal judge underscored the flaming hypocrisy of the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees, who, it is all too clear, make the law up as they go along in order to reach their desired outcomes. So I say hats off to Judge Murphy, even if his ruling proves ephemeral. He, at least, understands that his job is to follow the law, not a would-be dictator who declares himself to be the law.

Who ya gonna believe, Karoline Leavitt or the intelligence community’s lyin’ eyes?

Apropos of another piece I posted questioning how trump could have possibly known that US military strikes had “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities just hours after the attack took place: Of course he couldn’t and he didn’t.

Preliminary US intelligence assessments now suggest that the strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months at most.

Per CNN:

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”

Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

Expect trump to rage at the “fake news” put out by the “enemies of the people,” his favorite epithet for the news media.

Indeed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

So who ya gonna believe, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, or Karoline Leavitt?

Never mind that her wild accusation makes absolutely no sense. If the assessment was flat-out wrong, why was it classified as top secret? And if it was top secret, how did a low-level loser have access to it?

But I’m still putting my money on Leavitt. After all, her relevant intelligence experience consists of writing for her school newspaper at Saint Anselm College and interning in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. Oh, and she was communications director for New York Representative Elise Stefanik, who has distinguished herself as the most sycophantic of trump sycophants.

Besides, there’s an upside to her contention that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated. If they were, presumably trump will see no need to take further action.

Anyone want to lay money on that?