Tonight in Your Rights: "This Wolf Comes as a Wolf"
NPR's new lawsuit against Trump quotes Scalia. A federal judge says Trump's war on BigLaw betrays the Framers, and Trump learns he isn’t king of NYC traffic.
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National Public Radio turned to late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia for the most memorable line of a lawsuit seeking to block Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to defund public broadcasting.
Acknowledging that government retaliation is often hard to suss out, NPR’s lawyers quote Scalia’s dissent in Morrison v. Olson: “But this wolf comes as a wolf.”
Scalia had been talking about special counsels, which he believed were worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing—but a naked intrusion into executive power.
NPR’s lawsuit observes that Trump has dispensed with the sheep’s clothing altogether when it comes to targeting his perceived ideological opponents.
“The order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased,’” the complaint states. “And the ‘Fact Sheet’ and press release accompanying the order, which echo prior statements by President Trump and members of his administration, only drive home the order’s overt retaliatory purpose. They deride NPR’s content as ‘left-wing propaganda,’ and underline the President’s antipathy toward NPR’s news coverage and its editorial choices.”
The executive order purports to direct the Center for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit organization that is not a federal agency, to cancel direct funding for NPR and PBS. It also orders the heads of other federal agencies to “identify and terminate” any “direct or indirect funding” of the networks.
NPR’s lawyer Miguel Estrada, a George W. Bush-era conservative from the firm Gibson Dunn, wants a judge to block the order as beyond Trump’s power, a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and unconstitutional under the First Amendment and Fifth Amendments.
“The Founding Fathers knew this!”
It’s rare to see a federal judge exasperated enough to use an exclamation point in a written ruling.
Today, a conservative federal judge used exclamation marks twice in the opening paragraph to tell Trump that his executive order targeting the law firm WilmerHale betrays the vision of the Framers of the Constitution.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his introduction:
“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this! Accordingly, they took pains to enshrine in the Constitution certain rights that would serve as the foundation for that independence. Little wonder that in the nearly 250 years since the Constitution was adopted no executive order has been issued challenging these fundamental rights. Now, however, several executive orders have been issued directly challenging these rights and that independence. One of these orders is the subject of this case. For the reasons set forth below, I have concluded that this order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional. Indeed, to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”
Later in the ruling, Leon found, in effect, that Trump came in like a wolf: “The order shouts through a bullhorn: If you take on causes disfavored by President Trump, you will be punished!”
In total, the judge punctuated his ruling with exclamation points at least 27 times, although one of those quotes Trump himself. Some of the others pan the government’s arguments with remarks like “Please!” or “Please—that dog won’t hunt!"
Twice, Leon endorses WilmerHale’s arguments with a hearty: “I agree!” The ruling isn’t a surprise to those who attended oral arguments where the judge told the government: “Give me a break.”
Two other federal judges have emphatically found Trump’s executive orders targeting other major law firms, Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block, unconstitutional. The federal judge who ruled in Perkins Coie’s favor compared Trump’s order to the famously misunderstood quotation from Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” A fourth ruling, in the case of the firm Susman Godfrey, remains pending.
Read the full ruling here.
Apparently, Trump isn’t the king of Manhattan traffic
Earlier this year, the White House posted a doctored Time Magazine rendering of Trump wearing a crown to announce that Trump would try to block congestion pricing in New York City, which had reduced traffic on major highways.
Today, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from trying to end the decidedly local policy.
U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman, a Trump appointee, found that New York would likely succeed in its effort to keep the toll in place.
As a reminder, All Rise News recently ran an interview with Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin on a “No Kings” protest scheduled for Trump’s birthday to put a damper on the military parade that he ordered for himself.
Way to go, Judge Liman, setting a fine example for the Supreme Court!