Smelly Supreme Court (Updated)
Belligerent bias. Obnoxious overreach. Injurious intervention.
First, Chief Justice Roberts cast the fifth vote needed to provide emergency relief to the government. That was Monday evening in Trump vs J.G.G. These truths are self evident:
no Government relief was needed
the Government had no emergency
Indeed SCOTUS should not have heard this case. SCOTUS would have looked wise to stay out of this mess. That would have reduced the torture and abuse of U.S. persons kidnapped and sent clandestinely to El Salvador.
U.S. ICE agents rounded up Venezuelan immigrants and deported them with unparalleled haste because the Administration knew what it was doing would be found illegal within hours.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele wrote on social media that 238 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had arrived in the Central American country, along with 23 members of the international MS-13 gang, on Sunday morning. Take it from Bukele, 261 people.
The administration had rounded up these U.S. persons egregiously by very questionably invoking (by proclamation and by executive order) the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Clearly on its face, the AEA is being used illegally and this Court knows that facial discrepancy.
Invoking illegally a wartime authority in peacetime to bypass conventional immigration law is abusive of discretion.
The Administration whisked these people away to a notoriously brutal, foreign-run prison. The Administration’s speed in whisking these people out of country shows their clear consciousness of guilt. They knew their weak position would not stand. The D.C. Circuit, in fact, did provide a strong shot in the arm to Judge Boasberg’s positions when it denied the government’s motion to stay Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining orders (TROs).
U.S. ICE agents hand over kidnapped U.S. persons to the El Salvadoran Police.
Second, the relief granted by the Court did not address the legality of the administration’s kidnapping and deporting the 261 Venezuelan nationals. These were persons in the U.S.
Every U.S. person is afforded the protection of the Fifth Amendment. They have a right to due process—Notice given and to be heard.
This Court conveniently decided to sidestep that issue in order to intervene against and vacate the lower courts’ TROs. In so doing, this Court delayed justice for the U.S. persons’ kidnapped and deported to a prion in El Salvador. The Court placed a concealed thumb on the scale. New filings in Texas will now be required for those held there. Their appeals will go to the Fifth Circuit, an extremely conservative right-leaning court. This Court thinks it is cute, but any others arrested will go to their Federal court, wherever that is.
This Court cruelly extended the time of incarceration in which these U.S. persons will be tortured and abused. This Court has neither decency, nor shame.
The Court’s reasoning is next to nil. The Court simply raised discretionary protocols and procedures which it feels should have been used to prosecute while ignoring all of the past prosecution.
The Court relied on the fog of bureaucracy to vacate decisions of the lower courts. One cannot argue with this Court as its unsigned ruling allowed no discussion, and frankly the nuances present no basis of merit to me. Each venue is correct.
This Court ignored the moral implications of the cruelty, abuse, and torture that is being imposed on those U.S. persons summarily deported that were to be protected by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Justice is not being served here. The Trump Administration’s cruel nature is being indecently serviced.
The Court stood up to lick the boots of the author of the illegal executive orders. In so doing the Court elevates a demagogue president and victimizes lawful U.S. residents and condones the abuse and torture.
The instant plaintiffs sued in the District of Columbia federal court. They sought and obtained an order requiring the government to return them to the U.S.
By a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled that immigrants who were deliberately whisked out of the country without notice and before they could seek relief should have filed claims for habeas corpus in Texas—rather than a claim seeking a return to the U.S. filed in Washington, D.C. That insultingly defies logic and is unconscionable. They were kidnapped and held in secret captivity for God’s sake. They were shackled in custody, aggregated, and held incommunicado in Texas. The Court knew this.
Trump is acting in an extra-constitutional manner. He has no authority to seize residents of the U.S. and transfer them to a third-party country for imprisonment without affording any due process or judicial review. The Court was 9-0 on that issue alone.
For the second time in recent days, Justice Jackson questioned the Court’s willingness to respond when the Administration cries “emergency.” The emergency setting necessarily entails less consideration and thought than the normal process of full briefing followed by oral argument and internal deliberation.
This suspicion of the emergency process has become a strong fault line in the Court separating decency from the indecent. It is always the 5 men on the Court that are neither concerned with, nor self aware of their indecency.
The Court has become deviant in its use of emergency procedures—when it easily could have addressed this after full briefing, oral argument, and intra-court deliberation. Here, Boasberg’s TRO was due to expire in a few days. There is no persuasive reason the Court couldn’t have waited for his ruling and considered the issue in the normal course. Boasberg can still pursue contempt of court issues.
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“Life is so precious and so short,” Joy Ann Reid just told us. “What is the point of a public platform if you’re not going to use it? I’m going to Navalny this shit until America is what it promised my mom it would be.” I agree with Joy.
Arbitrary and Capricious Ruling
Arbitrary is random choice or personal whim, rather than any logical reason or required system. The Court has chosen arbitrary. When of power or a ruling body, arbitrary is further defined as unrestrained and autocratic in the abuse of authority. That is why “arbitrary” is so often used to address legal issues.
Capricious is impulsive, unpredictable, and prone to sudden, often unaccountable changes in attitude or behavior. Capricious describes acts predicated on whims or impulses rather than reason or logic. The Court has chosen capricious.
Capriciousness makes the Courts actions and decisions difficult to anticipate. Sudden changes from lower courts’ logical determinations do not address the foundational legal outcomes needed, instead they complicate those. The Court shows only the moods, opinions, or actions that shifted abruptly the possible outcomes without warning, leading to instability and uncertainty in this Courts relationships and interactions. Other possible outcomes are debased by the Court.
At the end of the day, the Supreme Court’s shameful, arbitrary, capricious, and smelly ruling was to:
continue the abusive treatment of people deported illegally by the Trump Administration
stop the DC Circuit from adjudicating a class of injured people
deprive the injured from legal recourse.
The Court overlooked Trump breaking the law. The Court admitted that Trump is breaking the law. There you see the Court’s extreme, unseemly bias, and how arbitrary and capricious it is. Reaching well past the law-breaking, the Court arbitrarily fabricated a way to reverse the logical decisions of lower courts. They contrived that venue was incorrect for a habeas complaint, but that has no bearing on the legal merit of the complaint. There was no habeas complaint. The ruling bifurcates by saying the Administration can take aim at and arrest a class, but a class cannot respond as a class. I call BS, and decry the Court’s heavy thumb. The venue argument is quite debatable if a hearing of arguments was granted. IT WAS NOT!
Hence, the Court ruling is capricious. The original perspective taken in the DC Federal Court was in fact more relevant to the class of people that are injured. The Court ruling further injures those deported by complicating their ability to obtain legal redress. In this manner, the Court has undermined civil and judiciary credibility.
Trump purported to act under a statute (the Alien Enemies Act) that applies only during time of war or “invasion by a foreign country.” Yet the Court looked past those facial deficiencies to say that the kidnapped migrants should have sued in a different district court—at a time when they were handcuffed in a plane in mid-air on its way to El Salvador.
The inhumanity and sophistry of the majority’s ruling are disgusting. The Court’s order says that detainees in the future must be granted sufficient time to file a petition for judicial review in the district in which they have been detained. The manifest injustice of those deported stands, and we see the Court grasping a weak procedural contrivance to avoid addressing Trump’s operating without legal or constitutional authority.
The cowardice of the Court’s majority is stunning. They do not want to hand Trump a loss—even though their reasoning, as applied to future cases, says that Trump violated the Venezuelan immigrants’ rights in this case.
The Court did not say Trump is doing things legally. It did not say the actions were not subject to judicial review. The Court said that individuals detained, even those under the Alien Enemies Act, are entitled to due process, including judicial review. Just like the Fifth Amendment says. How do those deported get that justice now? As Justice Sotomayor concludes in her dissent,
“The Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”
Is this who you are? What about those above that were kidnapped and deprived of their Constitutional rights? I move they be brought back right now. Cancel the detainment contract.
Can anyone order that they all be returned if they are not a class? There is the truth. They are a class targeted by a racist administration. There is no doubt about that. This Supreme Court earned my utter disgust. The class in the El Salvadoran prison will have to file under habeas in the DC circuit. Judge Boasberg will get this case back and will still be working the contempt issue. Further, the administration has been warned that another deportation of a single person without due process will be in violation of an order of the Supreme Court.
The Road Ahead. Trump already asked our military to shoot our citizens on the streets, “Can we shoot them in the legs?”), but the military refused. Now he plans to arrest protestors. You know about how far with this that Trump will go, but no one knows what will unfold. Grab a flashlight, because we are at a dark fork on this American road.
Understanding will become a bridge. We all should have affinity with that need. Thank you for finding my voice. You have given that a place and meaning by just being here. That is real, heart-felt sentiment. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help grow HotButtons.
Thank you for calling it all as it really is. Do they think we are so dumb as to accept what they are saying? What are they getting out of it? It really is sickening. They all make me sick.
Capriciously Smelly??? The place stinks to High Heaven!!