Tonight in Your Rights: Not yet, SCOTUS tells Trump
SCOTUS puts off ruling on Trump's scheme to oust Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, and a lawsuit tries to prevent mass layoffs during the shutdown.
Understand the latest legal developments affecting your rights in simple, plain language.
The Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts finally found a government purge that it wouldn’t allow Donald Trump to conduct immediately on the emergency docket.
At least, not for now.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments in January to determine whether to allow Trump to oust Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Trump jockeyed to oust Cook immediately to strongarm a majority to put the independent body under his influence and control.
Unlike various other orders on the emergency docket, the Supreme Court deferred a ruling on Trump’s request at this time, but the court did not deny Trump’s application.
(
invited me onto his show to break down the latest developments, which you can watch in the video below.)What to know about today’s development:
Despite letting Trump purge leaders of other previously independent government agencies, the conservative supermajority of the Roberts Court claimed in a prior ruling that the Federal Reserve was different: “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” they wrote in May.
The Roberts Court previously allowed Trump to remove Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris, and others, despite those bodies being structured by statute to be independent.
Today’s decision came down without any explanation or formal holding — or a vote breakdown — simply postponing a ruling on Trump’s request for another time.
Another Trumpist U.S. Attorney is disqualified
For the second time, a Trump-appointed interim U.S. Attorney has been found to have been serving in her position unlawfully and ordered disqualified.
First, Trump’s ex-personal lawyer Alina Habba was found to have been illegitimately serving as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and another shoe dropped on Tuesday evening on Sigal Chattah, a failed Republican candidate for Nevada attorney general controversially elevated by Trump to the U.S. Attorney’s office of that state.
As with Habba, Chattah has not been Senate confirmed or approved by the judges of her district, and a federal judge found that her ongoing presence in her position violates the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
“Given the Court’s conclusion that Ms. Chattah is not validly serving as Acting U.S. Attorney, her involvement in these cases would be unlawful,” wrote U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell, a George W. Bush appointee. “The Court will disqualify Ms. Chattah from participating in or supervising Defendants’ prosecutions.”
Trump’s Justice Department has been fighting to keep Chattah in that position, despite opposition by dozens of judges who called out her record of incendiary and racist rhetoric in an extraordinary letter.
“As set forth below, she has called a Black member of Congress a ‘hood rat,’ a Black woman prosecutor ‘ghetto,’ a prominent Black woman journalist ‘the dumbest human being in our nation,’ a prominent Black comedian a ‘monkey,’ and has consistently denigrated prominent Black people as ‘DEI,’” the judges’ letter notes. “Chattah also stated that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black and who Chattah campaigned against in 2022, ‘should be hanging from a fucking crane.’”
Several other Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys lack Senate confirmation or judicial approval, including John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York; Bill Essayli in the Central District of California; Julianne Murray in the District of Delaware; and Ryan Ellison in the District of New Mexico.
In the conservative National Review, former Antonin Scalia clerk Ed Whelan wrote that James Comey’s prosecutor Lindsey Halligan might also be illegitimately appointed. His argument can be found here.
Look out for my video explaining the significance of this development soon on the
’s .Averting mass layoffs during the shutdown
Hours before the government shutdown,
, an advocacy group affiliated with and others, filed a federal lawsuit to stop the Trump administration using the closure as an excuse to engage in mass layoffs.Trump’s government has threatened to do so through the Office of Management and Budget, and White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “There will be [mass layoffs] if Democrats don’t keep the government open.”
The unions that brought the lawsuit include the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO (AFGE); AFGE Local 1236; AFGE Local 3172; and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO.
In a 31-page lawsuit, the unions declare: “These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this Court.”
The unions note that purging the government has been the Trump administration’s longtime ambition since Inauguration Day.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that the Trump administration using the shutdown to potentially fire tens of thousands of employees “is not only illegal – it’s immoral and unconscionable.”
“Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service – more than a third are military veterans – and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling,” Kelley wrote.
Earlier this year, Kelly denounced Trump’s cancellation of hundreds of thousands of union contracts near Labor Day in an interview with All Rise News.
Read the lawsuit here.
More on the shutdown and the courts
In the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, Trump’s Justice Department immediately moved to pause civil causes and the chief judge already issued a blanket order extending deadlines in civil proceedings in Washington, D.C.
The public also got a glimpse of how the government could affect high-profile court cases when Trump’s Justice Department asked to pause all deadlines in the habeas corpus case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
“Absent an appropriation, Department of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal Defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” the government wrote.
Abrego’s attorneys do not consent to pausing the proceedings.
The government’s request goes before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who scheduled a hearing on Monday.
Read the filing here.
Terrific and important briefing, Adam!
Has anyone told Chattah that Brits routinely referred to the Indian subcontinent inhabitants with the N word before 1948?