Astonishingly, the DOJ Is Suing Every Maryland Judge Who Ruled Against His Lawless Deportations: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our late-June selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
As The UnPopulist’s regular readers know, we launched Executive Watch earlier this year. This one-of-a-kind project, which is designed to track presidential abuses of power as they are happening, has been meticulously documenting each illicit action emanating from the White House. (You can also find the tracker on the ISMA website.)
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. We’re covering everything from Trump’s studied—and illegal—refusal to allow congressional oversight into ICE detainment centers, to his decision to reward a lawyer with a nomination to a federal judgeship for showing the requisite willingness to flagrantly defy court orders that go against the president’s agenda—and that’s just for starters. We document more of his abuses below.
You should bookmark this page that contains a chronological scroll of the abuses and this post that sorts and lists them under our 5 P categories:
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses do you take to be the most troubling, and why?
June 24, 2025
Trump’s DOJ Sues the Entire Maryland Federal Appeals Court After it Stopped His Lawless Deportations
Category: Power Consolidation
Facing a series of losses in the courts, Donald Trump is putting the judges themselves on trial. His Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit personally against every federal judge in Maryland—and is demanding they recuse themselves and allow the case to be tried elsewhere. It’s a lawless gambit to rob Maryland courts of jurisdiction.
CBS News reports:
It’s rare for anyone—especially the federal government—to sue the entire federal bench in a state. The action ratchets up a fight with the federal judiciary over President Trump’s immigration policies, and underscores the administration’s growing exasperation with federal judges who have turned aside executive branch actions. …
Among the judges named in the Trump administration’s lawsuit is U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has called the administration’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador illegal. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia have asked Xinis to impose fines against the administration for contempt, arguing that it ignored court orders for weeks to return him to the U.S. …
The Trump administration has asked the Maryland judges to recuse themselves from the case. It wants a clerk to have a federal judge from another state hear it. …
James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, described the lawsuit as further part of the erosion of legal norms by the administration. Normally when parties are on the losing side of an injunction, they appeal the order—not sue the court or judges, he said.
On one hand, he said, the Justice Department has a point that injunctions should be considered extraordinary relief; it’s unusual for them to be granted automatically in an entire class of cases. But, he added, it’s the administration’s own actions in repeatedly moving detainees to prevent them from obtaining writs of habeas corpus that prompted the court to issue the order.
Trump cannot win a fight against the judiciary on their own turf, in the courts. But the administration’s heated rhetoric about judicial “lawlessness”—even as Trump systematically defies the basic legal rule of habeas corpus—shows that its goal is to discredit judges with the public, giving Trump political cover to defy the courts.
Trump had launched a war against Big Law and other law firms to stop them from representing political opponents and also punish them for their past representation. But now he is going against judges themselves in a way that undermines their independence. In other words, Trump is systematically trying to intimidate everyone in our legal system who does not do his bidding. Every aspect of our judicial system that stands in his way is a potential target.
June 24, 2025
Trump’s Personal Lawyer in the DOJ, Now Up for Judgeship, Actively Plotted to Disobey and Defy Court Orders Barring Lawless Deportations
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump appointed his personal lawyer Emil Bove to a top position in the Department of Justice and has now nominated him to be a federal appeals court judge. But a former DOJ lawyer has filed a whistleblower complaint describing Bove’s assault on the courts.
The New York Times sums up the charges:
[Erez] Reuveni’s account … was filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department inspector general on Tuesday, just one day before Mr. Bove is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a nomination to a federal appeals court. …
In March and early April, the filing states, Mr. Reuveni “became aware of the plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans.”
Top officials at the Justice Department and the White House sought to defy federal court orders “through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation,” his account states.
“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of a lawyer,” the account says. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.” …
A pivotal meeting occurred on March 14, when Mr. Bove, a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, spoke bluntly about the administration’s plans.
“Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” according to the account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—in which Reuveni was fired for telling a court the truth—is turning out to be a crucial nexus for the Trump administration’s sins against the constitutional order and rule of law.
June 22, 2025
Trump Deliberately Keeps Congressional Democrats in the Dark Before Military Strikes on Iran
Category: Power Consolidation
There is controversy over whether the recent airstrikes on Iran exceed the president’s constitutional authority. On the one hand, Congress has not authorized war on Iran. On the other hand, presidential war powers have been interpreted to authorize limited action that falls short of war “in the constitutional sense.”
In the past, presidents have bridged this gap by consulting with congressional leaders of both parties before taking any military action. Yet in the case of the Iran strikes, CNN reports that Donald Trump conferred only with Republicans while leaving most Democratic leaders in the dark:
The top two Republicans in Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, were both notified of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities ahead of time, according to multiple GOP sources.
People familiar with the matter initially told CNN that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries received notifications shortly before the public announcement—and after the attack itself.
But after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt disputed that account, a source conceded that Schumer had been called around 6 p.m.—a little less than an hour before the strikes began—with little detail. He was told of imminent military action without naming the country in which the action was to take place, the source said. …
Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, were not told until after the strikes had occurred, sources said.
Even a limited airstrike can lead to a need for more military action, so it should not be undertaken without broad support in Congress. Yet despite Republicans’ very narrow majority in Congress, Trump seems determined to govern with only the support of his own party.
June 19, 2025
Donald Trump Once Again Violates the Law Banning TikTok for His Own Political Benefit
Category: Policy Illegality
One of Donald Trump’s first acts in office was to declare that he would not enforce a law banning the Chinese-government-controlled social media network TikTok. In fact, he has actively shielded companies defying the ban from liability. One can debate whether Congress should have passed the ban. But his refusal to enforce the duly-enacted ban is illegal.
The Executive Functions blog provides an overview:
The Supreme Court rushed to uphold the constitutionality of the TikTok ban on January 17. On January 19, the day the law came into effect, TikTok stopped working for U.S. users but then “flickered back to life … after President-elect Donald J. Trump said that he would issue an executive order to stall a federal ban of the app.”
The next day, January 20, Trump issued an executive order that instructed the attorney general to not enforce the act for 75 days so that Trump could assess the foreign policy implications of the ban and negotiate a workaround. The president also ordered the attorney general to take steps to immunize the private firms from any liability by suspending enforcement and penalties, including retroactively to January 19; by telling providers that they had not violated the statute and would face no liability for acting contrary to it; and by claiming that the president’s enforcement discretion precludes—because of unexplained and clearly spurious national security concerns—states or private entities from suing violators of the act.
The attorney general apparently communicated to the relevant firms concerning their non-liability. President Trump extended the non-enforcement directive on April 4 until today.
Today the President “further extended” the original executive order “until September 17, 2025”—that is, 90 days this time instead of 75. The statute establishing the TikTok ban authorized the president to grant a “1-time extension of not more than 90 days with respect to the date on which this subsection would otherwise apply to” TikTok only if the president certifies to Congress concrete progress toward divestiture of TikTok—including “binding legal agreements to enable execution” of divestiture “in place.” There has been talk of divestiture negotiations between ByteDance and Oracle. But as of the writing I have seen no reporting that suggests the president has certified anything to Congress. And it doesn’t matter even if he did meet the statutory criteria and certify now, since the extension only applied to the first 90 days after January 19, 2025.
Executive Functions explores the constitutional basis for “prosecutorial discretion” and finds that this meets none of the criteria, since “it is a refusal to enforce a law simply on the ground that the president does not like it.” Compare this to his threats against media companies he does not like.
We can add that Trump wants to save TikTok because he regards it as a friendly medium—and its executives have intensively lobbied him and supported his campaign. So he is disobeying the law specifically for his own partisan advantage.
June 19, 2025
ICE Illegally Refuses to Allow Congressional Oversight of its Detention Centers
Category: Policy Illegality
Using its power of the purse, Congress passed a bipartisan law last year that makes funding for immigration enforcement conditional on allowing lawmakers to visit ICE detainment facilities unannounced. The administration has been blatantly defying that law, both in practice and now in formal policy.
The New York Times reports:
Under federal law, members of Congress can make unannounced oversight visits to immigration facilities that “detain or otherwise house aliens.” Lawmakers are not required to provide “prior notice of the intent to enter a facility” to conduct oversight. …
But in guidance released this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement asks members of Congress to give at least 72 hours notice for a visit to its facilities. Asked about the policy, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, went even further, suggesting that federal officials would not be allowed entry unless they provided a week’s notice. …
The new policy, updated since February, also denies that ICE field offices are subject to the provision in federal law about congressional oversight visits. Detained immigrants have been held in some of those offices for days waiting for officials to process their cases.
Democratic lawmakers in California, Illinois and New York have been turned away from ICE field offices and processing centers in recent days, sometimes after trying in vain for hours to gain access to buildings that they say they are authorized to visit.
ICE is determined to make itself fully into America’s secret police, preventing even members of Congress from knowing who it has grabbed off the streets or the conditions in which they are being held, and detaching themselves completely from the knowledge or control of the people’s representatives.
June 12, 2025
Trump Abuses FTC’s Powers to Force Advertisers to Support Right-Wing Media Against Their Own Conscience
Category: Power Consolidation
Having fired all the Democrats at the Federal Trade Commission, Donald Trump is now abusing its power to block or approve mergers in order to demand political compliance from big corporations. Most recently, Trump’s FTC is requiring advertisers to shunt money to conservative media as a condition of doing business.
The New York Times reports:
As the Trump administration considers approving a proposed merger between two of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, regulators may impose unusual conditions.
A proposed consent decree would prevent the merged company from boycotting platforms because of their political content by refusing to place their clients’ advertisements on them, according to two people briefed on the matter. …
Andrew Ferguson, the F.T.C.’s chairman, has said the spending pullbacks amount to illegal boycotts. Advertisers say they should have the freedom to spend their money as they wish.
Some advertisers and brands have not wanted to be associated with social networks that can be a breeding ground for violent, inaccurate and politically divisive content … out of concern for what the industry calls brand safety, protecting their clients’ reputations. …
In March, a group of senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote to the FTC and the Justice Department’s antitrust division asking for an independent evaluation of the deal, saying X could be “attempting to strike a quid-pro-quo deal” for approval of the deal in exchange for advertising dollars.
The New York Times is soft-pedaling the story. Brands stopped advertising on Twitter after Elon Musk’s policies produced a surge of racial slurs which are now typical of the platform. Trump’s FCC is compelling companies to give financial support, not just to right-leaning speech, but to virulent racism.
June 11, 2025
Trump Trashes America’s Bedrock Commitment to an Apolitical Military and Demands Only MAGA-Supporting Troops at His Speech
Category: Power Consolidation
Donald Trump recently gave a speech dripping with partisan rancor—denouncing opposition politicians and the media—in front of soldiers at Fort Bragg, an audience not used to having to sit through petty political sniping. Worse, that audience of soliders had already been pre-screened for ideological sympathy.
Military.com describes the results of its investigation:
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump’s recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.
One unit-level message bluntly said “no fat soldiers.”
“If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” another note to troops said. …
Adding to the spectacle, a pop-up shop operated by 365 Campaign, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based retailer that sells pro-Trump and other conservative-coded memorabilia, was set up on-site with campaign-style merchandise on Army property. Soldiers were seen purchasing clothing and tchotchkes, including “Make America Great Again” chain necklaces to faux credit cards labeled “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”
Permitting the sale of overtly partisan merchandise on an Army base likely runs afoul of numerous Defense Department regulations aimed at preserving the military's long-standing commitment to political neutrality.
This is a big breach of the customary separation between civilian politics and the military. Combined with a politically motivated purge of top generals, it is part of an attempt to make the U.S. military into a partisan organization loyal to a political leader rather than to the United States.
June 10, 2025
The Administration Unconstitutionally Tries to Usurp Congress’ Power of Purse by Illegally Freezing Mandated Federal Spending
Category: Policy Illegality
From the beginning, DOGE has been less about cutting spending than seizing the “power of the purse” away from Congress and giving control over federal spending to the executive—in defiance of Article I of the Constitution. The latest gambit is simply to freeze spending and dare Congress to do anything about it.
Politico reports:
The Office of Management and Budget late last week directed several agencies to freeze upward of $30 billion in spending on a broad array of programs, according to agency emails and two people familiar with the plan. …
The order to freeze some funding at more than a dozen agencies comes in advance of a budget spending “deferrals” package that the White House plans to send Congress. Spending deferrals allow the executive branch to temporarily prevent authorized dollars from going out the door—but only if lawmakers sign off on the move.
Freezing the spending before making that request seems to fly in the face of Congress’ constitutional power and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, said Joseph Carlile, former associate director at OMB in the Biden administration. … “This is consistent with an administration that believes that they have broader powers around budget and spending than any other administration has ever been able to find,” Carlile added. …
Yet the White House has worked to keep the effort quiet, said one person in the administration with direct knowledge of the strategy. The person said the White House directive was communicated largely to agencies over the phone to avoid creating a paper trail.
The power of the purse is the basis of all congressional power. If Congress does not control spending, it’s not clear what it does control. This is why the administration has been trying to take over that power—and why congressional Republicans have been eager to give it away.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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Power consolidation is the most worrisome abuse sought after by this president and his administration. DT’s efforts towards authoritarian rule are abetted by the‘fertilizer’ that is the Republican Party.
Why do I believe that power consolidation is the most dangerous goal of DT and his sycophants? Because it is the seed from which all other abuses will grow.
Stay strong. Stay engaged.
Lynn
While all of these actions are very concerning it’s the lawsuit against the Maryland judges that concerns me most. This administration is going after the judiciary in an effort to diminish their authority over his illegal actions. The president can use his talking points to gain support from the public and make individuals disbelieve the law. If he wins this lawsuit he will have more kingly powers. And he’s sure to use them to gain further power.