Another week where America turns its attention to a rotten judiciary which is fast erasing any respect we once had for it.
As the prior outrageous injunctions by numbers of (judge shopped) District Courts make their way up the judicial ladder, even more of them were issued this week. I think everything the President has done is the object of at least one District Court injunction. In the meantime, corruption of the judiciary has become so overt that two judges were placed under arrest this week.
The case that particularly caught my attention this week unsurprisingly is once again from the District of Columbia.
Federal law makes it a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (18 U.S.C. Sec. 611). D.C. federal district court judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an injunction against an Executive Order requiring proof of citizenship to vote and for welfare applicants to prove their citizenship before being given voter registration forms (LULAC v. Executive Office of the President):
Section 2(a) mandates that the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) revise the Federal Form to require documentary proof of citizenship. Both the civil rights groups and the Democratic Party moved to enjoin Section 2(a). The bulk of the Trump Administration’s defense was that the challenge was not yet ripe. However, the DDC pointed to a letter — which DOJ counsel at oral argument claimed “no knowledge” of — sent by the EAC to the chief election officials in the States. As that is a required part of the EAC’s process, the DDC found that the case was ripe.
On whether the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, the DDC concluded that States have the power to set voting qualifications — subject to the anti-discrimination voting rights amendments — and Congress has the power to set registration requirements through the Elections Clause. As the DDC emphasized, the President is not granted these powers. Moreover, Congress in the NVRA and HAVA gave the EAC power to alter the Federal Form. Intriguingly, the DDC invoked the Major Questions Doctrine in rejecting the Trump Administration’s position. I suspect that we are going to see this move a lot in the coming months, and many lawyers/academics who were skeptical of that doctrine will find it suddenly useful. It will be interesting to see whether the Supreme Court is willing to apply the Major Questions Doctrine as assiduously against the Trump Administration as it did the Biden Administration.
Because the President is not given the exclusive and conclusive power to trump Congress’s judgment on voter registration rules, the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claim against Section 2(a).
Section 2(d)
Section 2(d) directs federal voter registration agencies to “assess” the citizenship of individuals who receive public assistance before providing a voter registration form. Only the Democratic Party moved to enjoin this provision.
Here, the DDC relied on the NVRA’s plain language, which provides that federal agencies “shall” provide the Federal Form to each voter who receives their services, unless the voter declines in writing. In the DDC’s view, this mandatory language does not leave room for citizenship checks prior to handing out a voter registration form.
The case is likely on its way to the Court of Appeals, but to end this delay in legitimizing federal elections, Congress should enact these provisions into law to make enforcing the existing law feasible. If they don’t, unless this ruling is overturned, while it is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, the federal government lacks a practical means to enforce this criminal provision and persons receiving federal harboring a Tren de Aragua member in his home and obstructing justice by destroying evidence against the alien.
In March, HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) arrested Venezuelan illegal alien and guesthouse resident Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, who is suspected of being in Tren de Aragua — a notorious, ultra-violent criminal gang that’s basically the Venezuelan version of MS-13. They nabbed him at Judge Cano’s home, where the family had both put him up and given him assault weapons to play with.
When FBI arrested him, they found Ortega had multiple cellphones. Afterwards, agents realized that one phone was missing. They realized this after Ortega told them. (They’d offered to let him make a phone call and gave him the phones they’d seized; Ortega said the one he wanted to use wasn’t there.) So this week, they returned to the Cano household with a new search warrant.
I promise I am not making this next part up.
During his FBI interview, former judge Cano — after being Mirandized — straight-up confessed that he’d found Ortega’s missing cellphone, smashed it with a hammer, and threw it in a city dumpster. Cano explained he did it because he knew it had pictures and videos of Ortega with guns — which were direct evidence of federal gun crimes and gang activity.
The evidence against the second judge arrested, this time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is no less startling.
…on April 18th, Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was presiding over an unremarkable criminal case involving a Mexican national charged with three counts of battery and domestic abuse. A couple of his victims were seated in the gallery waiting to testify. The accused, Jose Flores-Ruiz, was an illegal alien already deported in 2013, but it didn’t stick and he came back to commit more crimes.
Because of all the media misinformation, here is a link to the government’s complaint so you can read it for yourself. Note that a federal judge signed Judge Dugan’s arrest warrant — she had ample due process. Or, if you’re more of a listener, here’s Pam Bondi’s explanation about both arrests from a Fox interview yesterday (8:00).
Anyway, before Flores-Ruiz’s hearing started, court staff snuck word to Judge Dugan [snip] that FBI, CBP, and DEA agents had staked out the gallery and the hallway outside the courtroom, and were waiting for the hearing to finish so they could arrest Lopez. This enraged the judge (“this is absurd!”). So she sprang up — or at least attempted a rough approximation of ‘springing’ — and moved ponderously into action. She first adjourned the hearing, grabbed the judge in the courtroom next door for backup and, after demanding to see the agents’ warrant, ordered them to go to the Chief Judge’s office. They complied.
While agents were on the phone with the Chief Judge, Judge Dugan’s courtroom deputy came over and warned them the judge was trying to “push through” Lopez’s hearing, to get him out of the building while the agents were tied up talking to the Chief Judge. Meanwhile, back in her courtroom, Judge Dugan ordered Lopez and his attorney to come up to the bench, and after a frenzied, whispered conversation, personally escorted them out the courtroom’s private back door reserved for jurors and prisoners.
Lopez fled using a back elevator and sprinted off down 9th street. Fortunately, an alert agent spotted the serial crimedoer leaving. The team scrambled and a dramatic foot chase ensued. They finally tackled Lopez near State Street and 10th.
How, you may ask, can the Democrats defend such lawless judicial conduct?
Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, nails it, in my view:
Democrats spent the last 8 years stripping Americans of due process to jail them for protected political activity; illegally spying on the Trump Campaign; manipulating and fabricating intelligence and then criminally leaking it for partisan gain; using the FBI and intelligence apparatus to pursue political enemies; launching a coup against President Trump and his Administration; persecuting President Trump, his family, his aides and his supporters; censoring and deplatforming and blacklisting the opposition; removing opposition candidates from the ballot; maliciously fabricating false allegations to inflict outrageous financial punishments; raiding President Trump’s home and seizing his property; and weaponizing the entire legal system for the sole objective of incarcerating the Democrat Party’s chief political rival and seeking to illegally obstruct and rig the 2024 election. At the same time, Democrats orchestrated and engineered a mass invasion of the United States by foreign cartels and enemy terrorists, resulting in immense casualties and suffering across the nation. And now these same Democrats howl with rage when the invasion is returned and those who criminally harbor the invaders and feloniously obstruct their removal are held accountable under law.
Democrats thought they were clever — they adopted the Cloward-Piven strategy devised by two Columbia professors, imagining that if our borders were left wide open our social welfare system would be bankrupted and the people would force a redistribution of income through the government. Instead, the open border policy endangered and impoverished the middle class, costing the Democrats at the ballot box. This judicial intransigence is the last gasp of a sure-to-fail strategy of keeping illegal aliens here, on the welfare rolls, and encouraging them to vote. Promoting and supporting illegal immigration wasn’t a dumb enough plan — they’re now doubling down to defend judges engaged in obvious criminal behavior to keep these people here.
Jesus Christ is King
