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New York Court Reverses DOGE Cancellation of $100 Million for NEH Grants

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2026 //
2

Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern Districy of New York issued a ruling restoring $100 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that were canceled by Elon Musk’s DOGE team. The judge said the cancellations violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment, and furthermore that DOGE lacked the statutory authority to act. Judge McMahon ordered the reinstatement of every grant to writers, scholars, and researchers. The DOGE censors did not actually review the grants but used ChatGPT to identify words that the Trump administration had banned, especially those associated with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the decision was the judge’s ruling that DOGE had no authority to cancel these grants. In fact, DOGE had no authority to fire thousands of civil servants or to terminate entire agencies, like USAID.

She wrote:

On the central ultra vires question, Judge McMahon was unequivocal: “It is not that DOGE misconstrued a statutory provision conferring authority on it; it is that Congress conferred no authority on DOGE at all with respect to the awarding, continuation, or termination of NEH grants.”  

The Authors Guild, one of the plaintiffs, reported on the decision;

May 7, 2026—A New York federal court in a 143-page decision today held for the Authors Guild plaintiffs on every count in its case on behalf of individual writers and scholars against DOGE and the NEH for DOGE’s April 2025 mass cancellation at the National Endowment for the Humanities. It ordered the reinstatement of every grant terminated, delivering a complete victory to the Authors Guild and more than 1,400 writers, scholars, and researchers whose awards were abruptly eliminated.  

Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on all three of their claims, finding the terminations violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment and were carried out by DOGE without any statutory authority to act.  

The court issued a permanent injunction enjoining the administration from giving effect to the mass terminations and requiring the government to rescind every termination notice and restore all affected grants and certified the Authors Guild’s lawsuit as a class action covering all approximately 1,400 affected grantees. 

“Today’s ruling makes clear that no administration—regardless of its priorities—is free to defy the statutory purposes of federal agencies and that or to cancel grants based on viewpoint discrimination,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild. “Not only did DOGE have no authority to cancel the grants, it used an AI chatbot to invent pretextual reasons to do it anyway. Writers and scholars had structured their lives around these awards—taking leaves of absence, giving up other income, making commitments—because the government had entered into a legally binding obligation. That obligation must be honored. We are gratified that justice was done, grateful to our amazing legal team at Fairmark Partners, and we will be watching closely to make sure every one of these grants is restored.”  

Background 

In early April 2025, DOGE officials terminated more than 1,400 NEH grants awarded to scholars, writers, research institutions, and other humanities organizations totaling over $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds—the largest mass cancellation of previously awarded grants in the agency’s nearly 60-year history—with no individualized review, no notice, and no opportunity to appeal.  

Discovery revealed that a DOGE official had used ChatGPT to generate “DEI rationales” for termination, submitting thousands of grant descriptions to the AI tool with a single standardized prompt, without defining the term or understanding how the tool interpreted it. They didn’t take any steps to ensure that the system wouldn’t discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or other protected categories. DOGE also searched for grants containing keywords like “gay,” “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), “indigenous,” “tribal,” “melting pot,” “equality,” and similar terms. It did not search for analogous terms like “white,” “heterosexual,” or “Caucasian.” 

The results were, in the court’s account, irrational: Studies of ancient Jewish texts, the persecution of Uyghurs in China, the plastics industry, and American women in Paris in the early 1900s were all flagged as DEI. The NEH’s own acting chair told DOGE many of the rationales “mischaracterized” the grants but was overruled. His own email to DOGE acknowledged: “Either way, as you’ve made clear, it’s your decision on whether to discontinue funding any of the projects.”

Two Consolidated Cases

The result of this landmark ruling was actually two separate lawsuits that were quickly consolidated into one. On May 1, 2025, the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association filed the initial suit, ACLS v. McDonald, challenging DOGE’s mass terminations. Eleven days later, the Authors Guild filed its own suit, The Authors Guild v. NEH, in the Southern District of New York — structured as a class action on behalf of all approximately 1,400 affected grantees. On May 14, Judge Colleen McMahon consolidated the two cases, noting they were “substantially identical,” and the litigation proceeded jointly from there.

Because the Authors Guild’s suit was structured as a class action, Judge McMahon’s order applies not just to named plaintiffs but to all 1,400-plus writers, scholars, and researchers whose awards were canceled, making yesterday’s ruling a victory for everyone DOGE targeted. 

Ruling 

On the central ultra vires question, Judge McMahon was unequivocal: “It is not that DOGE misconstrued a statutory provision conferring authority on it; it is that Congress conferred no authority on DOGE at all with respect to the awarding, continuation, or termination of NEH grants.”  

On the ChatGPT-driven process, she wrote that it “would hardly be surprising if ChatGPT inferred, from DOGE’s repeated requests, that Fox and Cavanaugh were looking for reasons why grants could be characterized as DEI—and therefore terminable—and supplied ‘rationales’ simply in order to satisfy the user’s perceived demand. The utter lack of reasoning behind so many of its ‘rationales’ certainly suggests as much.” 

“We are extremely pleased with Judge McMahon’s ruling reinstating the more than $100 million in NEH grants that were cancelled by DOGE last April.,” said Jamie Crooks, Managing Partner of Fairmark Partners, LLP  “While we are still evaluating her detailed, 143-page opinion, the bottom line is clear: Judge McMahon agreed with the Authors Guild and the other plaintiffs that these ‘DEI’-based cancellations violated the First Amendment and Equal Protection, and that DOGE did not have the authority to order these grants terminated.  The Court’s order that the grants be reinstated will allow our clients and the hundreds of other scholars and institutions in the class to continue performing their important scholarly work, and it’s also a vindication for the rule of law and basic principles of constitutional law.”  

NEH award recipient Bill Goldstein said, “I am—and all of the plaintiffs will be— forever grateful for your brilliant, tireless, and effective work on our behalf. And on behalf of the First Amendment and what remains and must endure of the rule of law. The stakes are that high, and you made our rights and that right clear. Congratulations on your victory, and thank you for ours.” 

Given that the administration has ignored other judicial orders, including the preliminary injunction in this case, we cannot say whether NEH will in fact reinstate the grants and pay out the money owed under those grants. The court emphasized that its decision addresses only “the legality of the Government’s decision to terminate” the grants and that it is requiring the government to “rescind the termination notices,” but clarified that it does not “require[] the immediate payment of grant funds” or “adjudicate[] any contractual entitlement to money.” The reason for that it that claims seeking payment of money owed by the federal government must be brought in a separate court—the Court of Federal Claims. Here, Judge McMahon noted that securing payment of the grant funds “might well require a separate suit in the Court of Federal Claims”—though she did not outline a specific process. For now, we are reviewing the decision with our attorneys to determine next steps, including any possible action in the Court of Federal Claims. As always, our goal is to ensure that grantees receive the payments they are owed as promptly as possible.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Justice

Why Chief Justice John Roberts Should Be Removed

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2026 //
23

Christopher Armitage, author of “The Existentialist Republic” blog on Substack is filing a complaint against Chief Justice John Roberts for failing to disclose his family income and failing to acknowledge his very significant conflicts of interest. He wants us to do the same. We knew that Justices Thomas and Alito failed to disclose gifts and income. Add Justice Roberts to the list.

Armitage wrote:

Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more than five hundred cases argued at the Supreme Court by law firms that had paid his household millions in commissions. He architected the Court’s first ethics code and designed it to be unenforceable. This is a course of conduct stretching across two decades, connected by a single through-line: the belief that the rules that apply to every other federal judge do not apply to him.

The governing standard is 28 U.S.C. § 455, which applies to every federal judge including Supreme Court justices. Three of its subsections matter here, and a judge only needs one of them to trigger the recusal obligation. Roberts triggers all three.

Subsection (a) says a judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This is the appearance standard, and it does not require actual bias. It requires only that a reasonable person knowing the facts would question the judge’s impartiality.

That’s the lowest bar, and it’s the easiest to satisfy. The next two are more specific and even more difficult to evade.

Subsection (b)(4) says a judge shall disqualify himself where “he or his spouse, or a minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.” The language is broad on purpose. Congress wanted the net to catch exactly the kind of arrangement at issue here.

Subsection (b)(5)(iii) adds that a judge shall disqualify where a spouse “is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” That subsection covers situations where the financial interest runs through the spouse rather than through the judge directly.

Bennett Gershman, a legal ethics professor at Pace Law School, reviewed the Roberts household arrangement in 2022 at the request of a whistleblower. His analysis applies all three. A law firm that paid the judge’s household hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission has an ongoing commercial relationship with the spouse, and that spouse has an interest, whether measured as past compensation, ongoing business relationship, or future commissions, that could be substantially affected by the judge’s rulings in cases the firm argues. Even under the narrowest reading of “financial interest,” a reasonable person knowing that a law firm had paid Jane Roberts hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions would question John Roberts’s impartiality in a case the firm argued before him.

Roberts’s defenders have a single counter, and they cite it often. The Judicial Conference’s 2009 Advisory Opinion No. 107 says recusal is not automatically required merely because a spouse worked as a recruiter for a firm with business before the court. But the same opinion says recusal may be required where the relationship is “substantial and ongoing.” $10.3 million in documented commissions over seven years, with clients including multiple firms that appear before the Court multiple times per term, meets any reasonable definition of substantial and ongoing.

The recusal obligation is not discretionary under § 455. The statute uses the word “shall.” Roberts’s defense would have to argue either that his wife’s commission income doesn’t constitute a financial interest in firms paying the commissions, which is a strained reading, or that the interest isn’t substantially affected by his rulings, which is also strained because firms that win at the Court get more business and firms that lose get less.

The whistleblower is Kendal Price, a former managing director at Major, Lindsey and Africa, the legal recruiting firm where Jane Sullivan Roberts worked from 2007 to 2014. Price filed a federal complaint in December 2022 with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the Department of Justice. He attached internal company spreadsheets, his own sworn affidavit, Jane Roberts’s 2015 arbitration testimony, and Gershman’s supporting legal memorandum.

An important note. This information was released because of a whistleblower, and some would say that means it is possible there is considerably greater corruption that just hasn’t been brought to the public. Some might say that it’s likely the tip of the corrupt iceberg. Few people would be willing to gather evidence on their employers activities, bring those to Congress, and risk attracting the enmity of the leader of the highest court in the land. Fewer will follow in that person’s footsteps if they see zero consequences follow from the whistleblowers disclosure.

The spreadsheets showed Jane Roberts earned $10,323,842.70 in commissions over those seven years on $13,309,433 in attributed firm revenue. An MLA partner described her in sworn testimony as the highest earning recruiter in the entire company by a wide margin.

The documented placements include former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to WilmerHale, Washington attorney Robert Bennett to Hogan Lovells, former United States Attorney Neil MacBride to Davis Polk, and New York Federal Reserve general counsel Michael Held to WilmerHale. Jane Roberts testified under oath that she placed senior government lawyers at starting partner salaries up to three million dollars. Successful people, she said, have successful friends. Mark Jungers, a former MLA managing partner, told Politico the firm hired her hoping to benefit from her being the Chief Justice’s wife.

The scope of Roberts’s corruption is not measured in individual cases. It is measured across the entire docket of the Supreme Court over two decades. WilmerHale alone, one of Jane Roberts’s documented client firms, had 18 cases at the Supreme Court in the single term of 2016, and Seth Waxman of WilmerHale has argued more than 85 Supreme Court cases across his career. Hogan Lovells, another documented client firm, argued 8 Supreme Court cases in 2024 alone and has represented nearly 10 percent of the Court’s entire docket in recent terms. Across Roberts’s two decades on the Court, the law firms paying his household in commissions have argued more than five hundred cases before him. He recused from none of them on spousal income grounds.
In 2019 she moved to Macrae and opened the firm’s Washington office, and her earnings from 2015 forward have never surfaced in public reporting.

Each year the Chief Justice signs a federal financial disclosure form required of every Article III judge under the Ethics in Government Act, and each year for more than a decade, the form described his wife’s compensation as salary.

The characterization was false. Jane Roberts earns commission, paid per placement, originating with the law firms that hire her candidates, and commission income and salary income are different categories of earnings governed by different tax treatment and different disclosure rules.

Gershman’s memorandum addresses this directly. Characterizing Mrs. Roberts’s commissions as salary, he wrote, is not merely factually incorrect. It is incorrect as a matter of law. Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and the man who prepared Roberts for his confirmation hearings, put it more bluntly. The Chief Justice “fudged the details,” Painter wrote in 2023, “misleadingly describing his wife’s earnings as salary.” Even that is generous. Painter is a Republican ethics lawyer protecting a Republican institution.

“Fudged” is what you say when you don’t want to say “lied.” Roberts has been knowingly lying on federal forms for more than a decade to profit from his position on the Supreme Court.

In 2023, after Business Insider published the whistleblower documents, Roberts quietly corrected the entry. His 2022 disclosure report, which the Administrative Office released that June, described Jane Roberts’s compensation as base salary and commission. The same report, for the first time, disclosed an equity stake in Macrae valued between $100,001 and $250,000. She had acquired it in 2019, and Roberts had omitted it from three prior annual filings and attributed the omission to inadvertence.

Title 5, Section 13106 of the United States Code requires the Judicial Conference to refer any judge it has reasonable cause to believe willfully filed false disclosures to the Attorney General. Civil penalties reach fifty thousand dollars per violation. Title 18, Section 1001 makes it a federal crime to knowingly and willfully falsify a material fact on a document submitted to the federal government, punishable by up to five years in prison. The statutes carve out no exception for the Chief Justice.

Congress impeached and removed Federal District Judge Thomas Porteous in 2010 on a record that included false disclosure forms. Congress did the work the statute imagines, and no one has ever brought a referral or prosecution against a sitting Supreme Court justice for the same conduct.

After ProPublica broke the Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow story in April 2023, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin wrote to Roberts inviting him to testify. Roberts declined in a one-page letter on April 25, citing separation of powers concerns. All nine justices signed an attached statement affirming that individual justices, not the Court, decide recusal questions. The self-policing rule remained in place.

In November 2023 the Court issued its first formal Code of Conduct. The document ran fourteen pages, and its preamble conceded that the absence of a written code had produced the misunderstanding that justices considered themselves unrestricted by ethics rules. The code contained no enforcement mechanism. It designated no body to receive complaints, empowered no body to investigate, and gave no body authority to impose sanctions. The Congressional Research Service confirmed the absence of enforcement in a formal report. The Brennan Center for Justice called the code designed to fail. Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics scholar at Washington University, said nothing in the statement suggested the Court even understood what the problem was.

The Dobbs investigation followed the same pattern. After the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked in May 2022, the Court’s marshal interviewed ninety-seven employees. Every employee signed an affidavit under penalty of perjury. The justices did not. The marshal’s January 2023 report said she had spoken with each justice, several on multiple occasions, but under a different standard than the one that applied to the staff.

The report concluded that she could not identify the source by a preponderance of the evidence, and the investigation closed.

Roberts is a primary architect of the ethics crisis that has broken the Court. He is a willing participant in the destruction of one of the three pillars of American checks and balances.

John Roberts is not a Trump lackey or a spineless rube. He is a builder of the world we are now living in. He is selling our future. He was appointed to the Supreme Court because of his belief that Republicans should be above the law and that the Presidency should be all-powerful so long as it’s run by a Republican. He might be an ideologue and a true believer, but not in regards to Christianity or Originalism. He is a true believer in the almighty dollar, and he sold his judicial soul to the highest bidder. May consequences someday visit him.

Five mechanisms exist to hold a federal judge accountable for the conduct documented here. Each of them is available. Each of them is being refused.

The law exists. 5 U.S.C. § 13106 makes willful false disclosure a civil violation with penalties up to $50,000. 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes knowing false statements to the federal government a felony punishable by five years. 28 U.S.C. § 455 mandates recusal. These are laws Congress wrote. They apply to the Chief Justice.

Impeachment exists. Article II, Section 4 provides for removal of judges for high crimes and misdemeanors. Porteous in 2010. Claiborne in 1986. Hastings in 1989. Congress has the power and has used it on federal judges.

The Judicial Conference has a statutory referral obligation under § 13106. It exists. It just hasn’t been used against a justice.

The DC Bar has disciplinary jurisdiction over its members. It exists. It just carves out judicial capacity by policy.

The Supreme Court Bar has a complaint mechanism. It exists. It just answers to the Court.
The mechanisms exist. The political will of the people who control them does not. The Judicial Conference won’t refer. The DC Bar declines on intake. The Senate won’t impeach. DOJ won’t prosecute. Each institution points at another institution and says not my jurisdiction, not my moment, not my responsibility.

In the United Kingdom, a party who believes a judge should step aside can file a challenge, and a different judge decides. In Canada, the Judicial Council accepts complaints from any member of the public and can recommend a judge’s removal.

In Germany, the other members of a Federal Constitutional Court panel vote on whether a colleague must recuse, and the judge in question does not vote on their own case. In Australia, a statutory code requires federal judges to disclose spousal income in full rather than by category label. At the European Court of Human Rights, the plenary court has authority to remove a judge who fails to recuse where the law requires it.


What every one of these systems shares, and what the American system lacks, is an external body with the authority to receive a complaint, investigate it, and impose consequences. The self-policing rule is the American anomaly.

This is not recent drift. In December 2000, Roberts flew to Tallahassee at his own expense and met privately with Governor Jeb Bush to advise on the governor’s role in assigning Florida’s electors to George W. Bush. Nobody disclosed the meeting during his 2005 confirmation hearings. A December 2000 email from Bush to Roberts, which surfaced a decade later through the governor’s gubernatorial correspondence, thanked him for his input in this unique and historic situation. The advice concerned scenarios in which the Republican-controlled legislature could assign electors directly, bypassing the popular vote and the ongoing recount.

The Reagan-era paper trail at the National Archives contains memos in which Roberts argued against heightened constitutional scrutiny for sex discrimination, recommended that Reagan distance himself from the Centers for Disease Control’s conclusion that AIDS could not be transmitted by casual contact, described comparable-worth pay equity as staggeringly pernicious, and wrote that an effects test in the Voting Rights Act would amount to a quota system for electoral politics. Twenty-seven years later he wrote the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder gutting the same statute.

For twenty years the ethics conversation around the Supreme Court has run on a curve composed entirely of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Roberts has played the institutional grown-up, the last one who cared about the Court as an institution, the one trying to hold the line. The line he held was the one that protected his own household. Thomas took gifts from Harlan Crow. Alito took flights from Paul Singer. Roberts took law firm money through his wife’s commission checks and mislabeled it on a federal form.

The DC Bar accepts disciplinary complaints from any member of the public against any of its admitted attorneys. John G. Roberts Jr. is admitted to the DC Bar, and I am filing a complaint against him today, after this article goes live. The complaint alleges that Roberts violated DC Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c) across sixteen annual federal financial disclosure filings from 2007 through 2022, by mischaracterizing at least $10,323,842.70 in documented commission income from law firms appearing before the Court as salary, with unreported commission income across an additional eight annual filings from 2015 through 2022 estimated at a floor of $11.8 million based on the documented seven-year mean, and with the actual figure likely substantially higher given Macrae’s reported revenue growth during that period. The complaint further alleges that Roberts omitted a material equity interest in his wife’s employer from three consecutive annual filings between 2019 and 2021. The complaint cites 5 U.S.C. § 13106 and 18 U.S.C. § 1001 as the underlying statutory predicates.

The men and women running this system built their careers on the assumption that nobody was paying attention. That the forms would go unread. That the recusals would go uncounted. That the statutes would sit on the shelf. That the institutions would cover for each other and no one outside would notice the arrangement.
We noticed.

We see the ten million dollars documented and the eleven million more estimated. The millions more likely unseen. We see the sixteen years of false characterizations. We see the hidden equity stake. We see the stock trades and the missed recusals and the Code of Conduct written to fail and the justices who signed affidavits for no one. We see the Judicial Conference that won’t refer and the Senate that won’t impeach and the Attorney General who won’t prosecute. We see every institution pointing at every other institution and shrugging.

Here is what you can do.


One. Share this article. Every person who reads it is one more person who knows, and the thing they built their careers on is the assumption that nobody knows. Post it. Send it. Forward it. Break the quiet.


Two. Send a letter to the DC Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel at 515 Fifth Street NW, Building A, Room 117, Washington DC 20001. Write it in your own words. The facts to include are that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. mischaracterized his wife’s commission income as salary on sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, omitted a material equity interest for three consecutive years, and did not recuse from more than five hundred cases argued by law firms paying his household in commissions. The relevant statutes are 28 U.S.C. § 455, 5 U.S.C. § 13106, and 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and the rule to cite is DC Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c). It takes about ten minutes.


All of this movement creates pressure. Pressure creates heat. Enough heat and things will change. Be the heat, be the pressure, and the system will bend. That’s how we take our damn country back.


We need 10 subscribers per article. Yesterday, despite hundreds of thousands of daily readers, we fell short of that number for the first time in nearly a month. If you want this all to continue, for everyone, then we need you!


Don’t let this be the reason you miss rent or skip a meal. For everyone else, you can be one of the ten today and make sure the articles, books, legislation, and training keep coming for everyone.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Justice

Jennifer Rubin: Reasons for Optimism about U.S. Politics!

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2026 //
14

This a great article that will uplift your spirits!

Jennifer Rubin is a journalist and lawyer who was hired by The Washington Post to be its conservative columnist. But Trump radicalized her, and she became a leading voice for liberal policies. After Jeff Bezos decided to placate and woo Trump, she resigned her job and started a new and wildly popular blog called “The Contrarian,” where she and other brilliant writers gathered to critique the madness of MAGA.

She recently posted an optimistic analysis of American politics. Despite the gerrymandering, despite horrible court decisions, Democrats are in a great position to wash the MAGA stain out of the nation’s government.

It’s the most optimistic piece I’ve read in a long while, and I think you will enjoy it too.

Rubin writes:

In a span of less than two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court (contravening the text and intent of the post-Civil War amendments and decades of court precedent) and the Virginia State Supreme Court (overturning the will of Virginia voters and inventing a new definition of “election”) have bulldozed through the electoral landscape to slant the 2026 midterm playing field in Republicans’ favor.

In Louisiana v. Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court demolished 60 years of progress in voting rights, robbed Black and Hispanic communities of the power to elect representatives of their own choosing, and aimed to decimate the ranks of non-white U.S. House members, state legislators, and local officials. This is nothing short of an attempt to reimpose white supremacy.

(MicroStockHub/iStock)

Voting rights legal guru Rick Hasen wrote:

This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation…. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters.

As infuriating, partisan, and legally unsound as these rulings are, they are not the final word on either the midterms or the future of our multi-racial democracy.

The Midterms

Even with the loss in Virginia, Democrats’ five-seat pick up in California should more than counteract the original Texas re-redistricting (where two of the five seats Republicans sought to steal may well go to Democrats). And despite the Virginia decision, Democrats may still pick up one to two more seats under Virginia’s old map. The net pickup for Republicans currently is less than ten before Democrats pursue their own redistricting in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.

However, even with the advantage of, say, a dozen rigged seats, Republicans are unlikely to keep the House majority. Since 2024, Democrats have swung the electorate substantially in their direction, over-performing in comparison to Kamala Harris in 193 of 226 state legislative races, by 20 points in some cases. On average, Democrats are doing more than 10 points better than they did in 2024. (Brookings’ William A. Galston wrote: “In the six special elections for the House conducted in 2025-2026, the swing toward Democratic candidates averaged about 15 points, while the swing toward Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia averaged 14 points.”)

More than 20 Republican House seats were won by less than 10 points in 2024; 43 Republicans won by less than 15%. Given the electoral shift, Democrats’ list of targeted seats expands each week.

The New York Times reported that gerrymandering “tells only part of the story” about the midterms. While “Democrats could end up losing at least half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more,” depending on new maps drawn in Southern states, Republicans face gale-force “headwinds” thanks to Donald Trump’s atrocious approval numbers, his reviled Iran war, soaring gas and other consumer prices, snatching away healthcare coverage from millions, disaffection of Hispanic voters, and rampant corruption.

In short, gerrymandering, however outrageous, will not be enough to save Republicans if Democrats generate huge turnout, especially among those voters enraged that they have been stripped of voting power. (As Hungary demonstrated, a determined opposition can overcome a raft of unfair impediments imposed by a corrupt, unpopular regime.)

Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans know that the MAGA cult has no message — which is why MAGA lawmakers and courts must rig the election to cement white supremacy. That’s all they’ve got.

Democrats have their targets

The enormity of reversing 60 years of progress on voting rights necessitates a new era of intense organizing and public education — a new civil right movement to counter MAGA’s court-imposed Jim Crow. That effort kicks off with a grassroots National Day of Action on Saturday, May 16, in Alabama. Organizers declared, “The dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is a reminder that we have unfinished business. The fight is ours and we are going to finish it.” Scores of democracy groups, faith-based organizations, and civil rights organizations will rally to oppose Jim Crow redistricting and to support multi-racial democracy.

The goal: Democrats must win, and win big, in 2026 and 2028. Senate seats, governorships, and other statewide offices cannot be gerrymandered. A massive registration and turnout-the-vote operation must expand deep into Republican areas, appealing to disgruntled independents and Republicans while firing up the base. Democrats will need a broad, inclusive electoral coalition to pursue bold reform. As former attorney general Eric Holder likes to say, progressives “need to be comfortable with acquiring power and using power.”

What then? If Democrats come out of the 2028 election with House and Senate majorities, and the presidency, they will have all the motivation and tools required to reverse the slide into Jim Crow, beginning with substantial reform of the discredited Supreme Court. The MAGA justices’ willful misreading of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution to concoct a “color blind” interpretation of voting rights (coupled with their monstrous expansion of executive power and abuse of the emergency docket) should unify democracy defenders on the urgency of Supreme Court reform through court expansion, term limits, revised appellate jurisdiction, and ethics reform.

Election law guru Rick Hasen argued:

The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people. They will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself.

With the election of aggressive Senate Democrats running in 2026 and 2028, Democrats should have little trouble carving out a filibuster exception, especially if they win by large margins that affirm voters’ rejection of MAGA assault on pluralistic democracy.

In addition to reforming the MAGA Supreme Court, a myriad of solid proposals for undoing the damage wrought by Callais include: state voting rights’ protections, a federal statute that requires nonpartisan redistricting, proportional representation, and a constitutional amendmentguaranteeing the right to vote. Democrats should pursue an “all of the above” approach, not merely to regain but to expand diverse voters’ participation and power.

Though the tools to sustain multi-racial democracy may be different from those employed in the 1960s, Madeleine Greenberg of the Campaign Legal Center reminded us: “Every generation has faced attempts to restrict access to the ballot box, and every generation has pushed back.” If Democrats win elections decisively and fully exercise the power they obtain, they can fix what MAGA white supremacists have broken. Only then can we fulfill the promise of pluralistic democracy.

The midterm elections of 2026 are approaching. Start working now to reclaim our democracy! Our time is now.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Justice, Trump

The Recidivism Racket and Our Broken Prison System

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2026 //
10

Rxan Smith writes on his blog about America’s broken prison system. We spend more on prisons than any other nation and have the highest recidivism. Our “get-tough” approach to crime is a failure, and a very costly one.

Smith writes:

Here’s an uncomfortable math problem nobody in Washington wants to do out loud:

America spends $182 billion per year locking people up.

That’s billion. With a B. Every year.

Not to rehabilitate. Not to reduce crime. Not to make you safer.

Just to warehouse human beings in a system so thoroughly designed to fail that two out of every three people released from prison are arrested again within three years.

Our country’s criminal justice system does not offer criminal justice, and it’s barely worthy of being called a system at all.

It’s a revolving door — and somebody built that door on purpose, installed it at taxpayer expense, and charges you rent every time it spins.

Uncomfortable Truth About “Tough on Crime”

For fifty years, American politicians — left, right, and everything in between — have campaigned on being “tough on crime.”

You know what “tough on crime” actually produced?

*The largest incarcerated population on earth: over 2 million people

*A recidivism rate of 67% within 3 years of release

*A $182 billion annual price tag that grows every year

*Communities so stripped of working-age adults that poverty compounds across generations

“Tough on crime” didn’t reduce crime. It industrialized it.

It turned human failure into a growth industry — complete with lobbyists, quarterly earnings calls, and a political class that discovered you can always raise money by scaring people.

Meanwhile, Norway — with its functional approach — runs a prison system with a 20% recidivism rate.

Ours is 67%.

Norway’s isn’t radical. It’s just effective. The difference? They decided prisons should actually produce people who don’t go back.

The Numbers Behind the Nightmare

Let’s get specific, because the specifics are infuriating:

The Scale

*United States incarcerates 655 people per 100,000 — highest rate on earth

*Rwanda is second. We beat Rwanda. Let that land.

*43% of inmates are Black Americans, who represent 13% of the population

*Average cost per inmate: $39,000 per year — more than a year at many state universities

The Recidivism Machine

*67% of released prisoners are rearrested within 3 years

*83% are rearrested within 9 years

*People released with less than $50 in their pocket, a bus ticket, and a criminal record that disqualifies them from housing, jobs, and student loans

*Then we act surprised when they come back

The Private Prison Problem

*Private prison companies manage roughly 8% of inmates but spend millions lobbying for longer sentences, mandatory minimums, and policies that ensure full occupancy

*CoreCivic and GEO Group spent over $25 million on lobbying and political donations between 2000-2020

*They are literally paid to make sure prisons stay full…

What We Got Instead of Rehabilitation

The American philosophy of incarceration rests on three pillars, all of which are broken:

Deterrence: The idea that long sentences scare people away from crime.

Reality: Most crimes are not committed by people weighing a rational cost-benefit analysis. They’re committed by desperate, mentally ill, or addicted people who aren’t doing the math. The death penalty states don’t have lower murder rates. The math doesn’t work.

Incapacitation: Lock them up so they can’t hurt anyone.

Reality: The average sentence ends. People come out. If they come out with zero support, no job prospects, and the same addiction or mental illness that got them there — you haven’t solved the problem, you’ve aged it.

Punishment: They did something wrong; they should suffer.

Reality: Fine. But suffering without any change in behavior just produces someone who suffered. If we want public safety, we need to care about what happens after the punishment ends.

We skipped the part where any of this was supposed to work.

What Rehabilitation Actually Looks Like

Other countries figured this out. We just refused to copy the homework.

The Norwegian Model (No, It’s Not Soft. It’s Smart.)

Halden Prison in Norway has a music studio, a jogging trail, a kitchen where inmates learn to cook, and individual cells with windows. Guards eat lunch with inmates. The focus is on preparing people to live normal lives.

Result: 20% recidivism rate.

The cynical American response: “That’s not punishment.”

The functional response: “Their prisons actually work.”

You want punishment or you want results?

Because right now, we have neither.

What a Real Rehabilitation System Looks Like

Open the link to learn what we should be doing instead of the present failed approach.

Categories Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Justice

Robert Reich: The Worst Justice in Modern Supreme Court History

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2026 //
9

Robert Reich has selected the Supreme Court Justice whom he believes is the worst in modern history. The two likeliest nominees are clearly Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision that reversed Roe v. Wade and that is responsible for the deaths of many women who were unjustly denied medical care because of Justice Alito.

But no, he chooses Justice Clarence Thomas. In this post, he explains why.

Friends,

I’ve long assumed that Samuel Alito was the worst. 

Alito — who authored the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the case that ended constitutional abortion rights by merely asserting that the high court’s prior opinion in Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided; who accepted a 2008 luxury fishing trip to Alaska, including private jet travel, from hedge fund billionaire and GOP donor Paul Singer yet failed to disclose it on Alito’s financial forms and didn’t even recuse himself from decisions involving Singer’s subsequent business before the Supreme Court; who hoisted an inverted American flag outside his Virginia home shortly after the January 6 Capitol riot, a symbol of support for Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election — has the moral and intellectual stature of a poisonous toad. 

But I’ve come to revise my view of the court’s worst Justice.

Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue. After reading his latest thoughts on America, I’ve concluded Thomas is even worse than Alito. 

Last Wednesday, Thomas gave a rare public address at the University of Texas in Austin that began as a banal tribute to the Declaration of Independence before degenerating into a misleading screed against progressivism. 

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream,” Thomas intoned. “The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.”

Thomas went on to blame progressives for the worst crimes of the 20th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils. 

This is pure rubbish. 

In reality, America’s Progressive era emerged at the start of the 20th century from the corruption and excesses of America’s first Gilded Age (we’re now in the second, if you hadn’t noticed) — its record inequalities of income and wealth, its “robber barons” who monopolized industries and handed out sacks of money to pliant legislators, it’s dangerous factories and unsafe working conditions, its violent attacks on workers who tried to form unions, its corporate control over all facets of government, its widespread poverty and disease, and its corrupt party machines. 

In many ways, the Progressive Era — whose most prominent leader was Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, not Woodrow Wilson, by the way — saved capitalism from its own excesses by instituting a progressive income tax, an estate tax, pure food and drug laws, and America’s first laws against corporate influence in politics.

Then, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin (Franklin D.), came Social Security, the 40-hour workweek (with time-and-a-half for overtime), the right to form unions, and laws and regulations that limited Wall Street’s ability to gamble with other people’s money. 

Clarence Thomas got it exactly backwards. Had we not had the Progressive Era and its reforms extending through the 1930s, America might well have succumbed to fascism — as did Germany under Hitler, and Italy under Mussolini, or to communist fascism, as did Russia under Stalin. Progressive and New Deal reforms acted as bulwarks against the rise of fascism in America.

In fact, it’s been the demise of such reforms since Ronald Reagan that have opened the way to Trumpian neo-fascism. 

Over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized in the 1950s, giving them bargaining leverage to get higher wages and better working conditions. Now, fewer than 6 percent are unionized, which has contributed to the flattening of wages, a contracting middle class, inequalities of income and wealth rivaling the first Gilded Age, and an angry and suspicious working class that’s become easy prey for demagogues. 

Wall Street has been deregulated — allowing it to go on gambling sprees such as the one that produced the financial crisis of 2008, which claimed millions of working peoples’ homes, savings, and jobs. 

America’s social safety nets have become so frayed that almost a fifth of the nation’s children are now in poverty. Yet Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have slashed taxes on the rich and on big corporations and have allowed giant corporations to merge into giant monopolies rivaling the trusts of the first Gilded Age. And Trump has ushered in an era of corruption the likes of which America hasn’t seen since that earlier disgraceful era. 

Thomas claims that “The century of progressivism did not go well.” Baloney. It helped America create the largest middle class the world had ever seen, while also extending prosperity to millions of Black and brown people. 

The tragedy is that America turned its back on progressivism and on social progress, in part because of the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas. 

Flashback: I was in law school in 1973 when the Supreme Court decided Roe, protecting a pregnant person’s right to privacy under the 14th amendment to the Constitution. 

Clarence Thomas was in my law school class at the time, as was Hillary Rodham (later Hillary Clinton) and Bill Clinton.

The professors used the “Socratic method” – asking hard questions about the cases they were discussing and waiting for students to raise their hands in response, and then criticizing the responses. It was a hair-raising but effective way to learn the law.

One of the principles guiding those discussions is called stare decisis — Latin for “to stand by things decided.” It’s the doctrine of judicial precedent. If a court has already ruled on an issue (say, on reproductive rights), future courts should decide similar cases the same way. Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise, their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say? — partisan.

In those classroom discussions almost fifty years ago, Hillary’s hand was always first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers – whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.

My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.

Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.

Bill was never in class.

Only one of us now sits on the Supreme Court. And he has shown no respect for stare decisis. 

Nor has he respected judicial ethics. 

A federal law — 28 U.S. Code § 455 — requires that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Thomas’s wife, Ginni, actively strategized with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on overturning the election results. Between Election Day 2020 and the days following the January 6th attack on the Capitol, she exchanged 29 text messages with Meadows, in which she spread false theories about the election, urged Meadows to overturn the election results, and called for specific actions from the White House to help overturn the election. She also served as one of nine board members of a group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement and called for the punishment of House Republicans who participated in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack. 

Yet Clarence Thomas has repeatedly participated in cases that have come to the high court directly or indirectly involving the 2020 election results, refusing to disqualify himself. 

In addition, he failed to disclose his wife’s income from her work at the Heritage Foundation, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act. 

Finally, there’s his speech last week in Austin. How can Americans be expected to believe in the impartiality of the Supreme Court in general and Clarence Thomas in particular when he condemns an entire philosophy of government — progressivism — and all the people who continue to call themselves progressives, in effect labeling them neo-fascists? 

At the start of his speech last week in Austin, Clarence Thomas noted that “My wife Virginia and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here, and it is so special to have our dear friends Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today.”

He was, of course, referring to the Republican mega-donor who has spent the last twenty years lavishing Thomas with personal gifts, luxury yacht trips, fancy vacations, and funding for Ginni Thomas’s political organization. 

Small wonder that Clarence Thomas prefers the Gilded Age over the Progressive Era. He’s the living embodiment of The Gilded Age’s public-be-damned excesses. 

Hence, he’s my nominee for the worst justice in modern Supreme Court history.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, History, Justice

Judge J. Michael Luttig: The Beginning of the End of Trump’s Presidency?

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
21

Judge J. Michael Luttig has always been considered a conservative Republican. He worked in the Reagan administration and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice Warren Burger. In 1991, he was appointed to the Fourth District Court of Appeals by President George H.W. Bush. Luttig resigned his judgeship in 2006 to work as general counsel for Boeing.

Although a stalwart conservative, Luttig was appalled by Trump’s attempt to overturn the election he lost in 2020. He testified to the House January 6 committee that Trump and his allies were “a clear and present danger to American democracy.” In 2023, he co-wrote an article with liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe arguing that Trump should be barred from running for the Presidency because of his role in the 2021 insurrection (Section 3 of the 14th Amendment).

When Trump was leading the field in 2024, Luttig predicted that Trump’s election would be “catastrophic” for the United States, and he subsequently endorsed Kamala Harris.

Luttig has continued to put the Constitution and the rule of law over partisan politics.

Judge Luttig wrote this article on his Substack blog. I reposted about half of it. To read it in full, open the link or subscribe.

Judge Luttig wrote:

On January 11, 2026, with America and the world anxiously watching — and hoping — Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome “Jay” Powell fearlessly stood up to the President of the United States, and his truth put the lie to Donald Trump.

For their honorable and courageous stands against the President of the United States, Chairman Powell and Judge Boasberg may have earned Donald Trump’s eternal enmity, but they have earned the nation’s and the world’s eternal gratitude.

On that day, Chairman Powell became the first elected or appointed public official to stand in the breach in America’s time of testing and confront the President of the United States, man to man. The first public figure in over five years who Donald Trump has been unable to insult, harass, threaten, or persecute into silence, bludgeon into submission, or politically destroy, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board became the first man to stand up to the wannabe king of the United States.

History will record that Chairman Powell’s courageous televised statement in defiance of the President of the United States marked the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, and history will richly reward Jerome Powell with its favor.

It could just well be that this honorable humble public servant single-handedly saved America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law, if only the others of America’s institutions of government, democracy, and law will finally summon the same courage and follow Jay Powell’s noble and courageous lead before it’s too late.

Jay Powell was always the one man in the world who could stand up to Donald Trump, and Trump knew it, which is why, despite his false bravado, he feared the Reserve Board Chairman. Trump forced the latest confrontation with Jay Powell in one last desperate attempt to force Powell from office so that he could finally seize control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank in the eleventh hour and manipulate the interest rates to disguise the crippling economic impact of his sweeping, unconstitutional global tariffs and his unconstitutional war in Iran.
It turned out to be the worst miscalculation of his life.

Donald Trump considered his years-long effort to fire Powell or force his resignation and to gain control over the independent Federal Reserve Bank to be the decisive showdown of his presidency. His face-off with the Federal Reserve was always to be Donald Trump’s Armageddon in which he victoriously vanquished his archnemesis Jay Powell and took the victor’s spoil of control over the Federal Reserve Bank.

When, not if, he succeeded, his conquest was to be the crowning achievement of his presidency — the conquest that assured the success of his entire presidency, because he would control the monetary policy of the United States and, along with it, interest rates, and thereby the economies of the world, to do with them whatever he pleased.

But Donald Trump’s gloriously imagined victory over Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve Bank was never to be and, like the Greek tragedy that it was, everyone in the world knew it, except Donald Trump.

When the day of the world heavy-weight championship finally arrived, the favored heavy-weight Reserve Board Chairman knocked out the reigning light-weight President of the United States in the opening round. The President was TKO’d in the championship fight of his life by the man he had insulted, tormented, and belittled for years.

Donald Trump had finally crossed the wrong man. It was the demure, universally respected Jay Powell who finally called Trump’s bluff, revealing that the humiliated emperor embarrassingly has no clothes.

Both America and the world had longed for a David to slay America’s Goliath and save the nation and the world from the giant’s tyrannical rampage. On January 11, As he spoke clearly, plainly, and truthfully about his ludicrously corrupt pretextual prosecution by the bully president, the entire world cheered on their new David-hero.

America and the world at last had their longed-for hero in the pitched battle for the heart and soul of America, The Honorable Jerome Powell, the courageous Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

History is written by the victor, Winston Churchill is (mis)reported to have said. On January 11, 2026, Jay Powell wrote the victor’s history of the 47th President of the United States before the would-be victor even got the chance.

It poetically fell to The Honorable James Boasberg to mop up after Donald Trump’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Fed Chairman. Judge Boasberg’s swift and withering judicial confirmation of the president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and Rule of Law officially ratified the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency that Jay Powell had wrought. For his distinguished service to the country and to the Constitution, The Honorable James Boasberg is America’s other Profile in Courage and Hero in the battle for America and its future.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Economy, Evil, Extremism, Justice, Trump

The Trump Regime is a “Criminal Enterprise” and Must Be Held Accountable

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2026 //
10

I subscribe to Marc Elias’ blog called “Democracy Docket.” Marc is a veteran prosecutor who is actively pursing lawsuits against the crimes of the Trump administration and winning many of them.

On his blog today is a fascinating conversation with another veteran prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.

Together they discuss how the Trump regime has corrupted the rule of law; how grand juries have usually stood firm in defending it; why Trump and his cronies must be held accountable for their efforts to destroy our democracy; why Merrick Garland was weak but Jack Smith was strong; why the Department of Justice must always be apolitical and hold members of both parties accountable; how Pam Bondi has repeatedly broken the law; and why the Epstein Files will eventually reveal a massive coverup.

All that is to say that I found the discussion to be enlightening and informative. These two—Elias and Kirschner–are truly experts, not just someone fulminating at the latest outage.

Since the content of the blog is for subscribers only, I can’t post it in full. It is definitely worth your while to subscribe.

Here is Marc Elias’ introduction to the dialogue:

For decades, the American justice system has operated on a “presumption of regularity” — the idea that the government acts in good faith. But as we enter the second year of this administration, that presumption has become a dangerous fantasy. Glenn Kirschner spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor, and he knows that when the rule of law is hanging by a thread, there’s no such thing as “business as usual.” 

Glenn joined me to explain why we need a “scorched earth” mission to investigate the criminal enterprise currently occupying the White House. We also dive deep into the Epstein files cover-up and discuss what it takes to hold the Trump administration accountable when we take back the White House in 2029. 

And here is a brief snippet from Kirschner’s remarks:

Glenn: I think accountability doesn’t look like “you’ve got to throw them all in prison, they all need to be in orange jumpsuits.” That’s not accountability. My version of accountability, my definition of accountability, is if we fairly, impartially, aggressively — and I mean scorched earth — investigate in an apolitical fashion every crime that we see with our own eyes. The President and his cabinet, basically this is a criminal enterprise. I prosecuted lengthy RICO cases in federal district court in Washington, D.C. I don’t say that flippantly. This is a criminal enterprise.

So what we need to do is make sure every crime gets fully investigated through an apolitical investigation whereby we give all of the evidence to the grand jury and we let them serve as the first check on our instincts with respect to who should be prosecuted. Do we have enough evidence to make out, one, probable cause, and two, beyond that, do we prosecutors believe we have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits, which looks like a conviction at trial? That’s some of the language taken from the U.S. Attorney’s Manual. That is our procedural Bible at the Department of Justice. Once we secure indictments against everybody who has been victimizing the American people and violating our nation’s laws, then we move into the courtroom. We try the case as best we can. We deliver it to the jury and they begin to deliberate.

Accountability is done at that point. That may sound counterintuitive coming from a prosecutor who liked winning convictions. I enjoyed holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the rights of victims, and protecting the community. But the result is not as important as the process. Justice is a process. And once we deliver it to the second check on our instincts—the trial jury sitting as the conscience of the community, just as grand jurors do—we live with the result, win, lose, or draw: conviction, acquittal, or mistrial because it’s a hung jury where the jurors couldn’t agree unanimously on a verdict. That’s what accountability looks like: putting everybody fairly and apolitically through the criminal justice system and let first the grand jurors decide and then we let the trial jurors decide.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Federal Judge Declares Trump Choice of Three Prosecutors to be Illegal

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2026 //
3

Trump and his Department of Justice have a very bad practice of appointing federal prosecutors without bothering to have them confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as the Constitution requires.

Several of his choices have been disqualified by federal courts. If a vacancy exists, the judges appoint a replacement. But Trump and Bondi then fire the judges’s choice.

Remember Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s personal attorney? He named her the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia. She got an indictment against New York State Attorney General Letitia James, but she was never confirmed by the Senate. After six months as interim U.S. Attorney, she was removed by federal judges, and the indictment she won was dismissed as illegal.

In New Jersey, Trump picked another personal attorney, Alina Habba, as U.S. Attorney, again bypassed the Senate, and a panel of judges removed her. When the judges named a qualified replacement, Trump and the Department of Justice fired him. Having been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, Trump has a very long list of personal attorneys.

The DOJ selected three prosecutors to take the place of Alina Habba.

Judge Matthew W. Brann ruled that the appointment of the three prosecutors was illegal. Brann, a conservative Republican appointed by Obama, said that this unconstitutional maneuver put in jeopardy all the convictions secured by this office since December, when the troika took charge.

He wrote:

Using italics that demonstrated the heightened tenor of his ruling, he wrote that the Trump administration had shown through its statements and actions that it cared far more about who was running the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office “than whether it is running at all.”

Judge Brann pointedly said that the president’s continued reliance on unlawful mechanisms to appoint top federal prosecutors meant that “scores of dangerous criminals could have their cases dismissed or convictions eventually reversed…”

During Mr. Trump’s second term, when judges have installed a U.S. attorney, the Justice Department has fired them. After it did so with an interim U.S. attorney in upstate New York recently, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, wrote on social media: “Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution.”

Judge Brann, a federal judge who typically sits in Pennsylvania but was designated to handle the matter in New Jersey, referred to that statement and others like it as “combative (and legally incomplete).” He said that such assertions clearly indicated that “the Department of Justice would not permit anyone to hold any United States attorney’s office if that person was not handpicked by the president…”

Judge Brann joins a growing collection of district court judges in New Jersey and around the country whose rulings are increasingly colored by their frustration with what they have consistently characterized as the lawless behavior of the Trump administration.

In several such rulings, judges appear to be seeking strategies to address frequent violations of the law. At least three in New Jersey have proposed new processes or tactics that they clearly hope will curb the administration’s conduct.

At the same time, the administration has grown more and more belligerent toward the judiciary. Top officials ridiculed the Supreme Court after it ruled against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and Justice Department lawyers began an appeals court brief last week by saying: “Courts cannot tell the president what to say. Courts cannot tell the president what not to say.”

Since last summer, the New Jersey prosecutor’s office has been a casualty of the chaos created by the Trump administration’s moves to retain control. Dozens of seasoned lawyers have left the office, and trial court judges have been forced to grapple with the possibility that decisions they make about criminal cases could be overturned.

The Trump administration is trying to destroy what it does not control: the electoral process, the legal system, the public’s belief in the fairness of democracy as a way of government.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Two Hurrahs for Our Legal System!

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2026 //
1

Despite the Trump regime attacking the Constitution, eroding our rights, and filling every office with incompetent or malevolent individuals, our legal system has frustrated some (certainly not all) of their evil designs.

Not three hurrahs but only two. Why? The Department of Justice is now wholly under Trump’s control. It has become Trump’s law firm, answering only to him. The U.S. Supreme Court has been far too accepting of Trump’s reckless policies. Too many federal judges have gone along with him.

All too often, the regime has ignored the judges. Rulings against Trump’s policies have come from all kinds of judges, including some appointed by Trump. Grand juries have refused his efforts to indict his enemies.

Nonetheless, many federal judges across the country have repeatedly blocked the regime. Many have defended the right of due process for immigrants, many of whom are arrested without a warrant or access to a lawyer, then disappeared into a detention camp or deported to a country they never lived in.

Here are reasons for cheer.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared that Trump does not have the power to slap tariffs on every other country, because the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress, not the President. Trump, furious, responded by slapping a 10% tariff on every country, then raised it to 15%. Will the Supreme Court ignore his open defiance?

This is the same Court that ruled that the President is above the law. Absolute immunity. Trump is the kind of guy who loves absolute immunity for any actions he takes.

Even more powerful than the decisions of judges has been the refusal of grand juries to indict Trump’s enemies and critics. That’s why he attacked Iran without congressional approval. Why should he bother? He is above the law, the dream of a habitual law-breaker.

Many federal judges have repeatedly defended the very American idea that immigrants–even undocumented immigrants–have legal rights. They have repeatedly interfered with ICE’s efforts to arrest, detain, and oust immigrants, without a hearing, without due process.

Federal judges confounded Trump’s vendetta against big law firms who represented Trump’s enemies.They frustrated his vengeance so consistently that the Justice Department dropped the charges. The law firms that quickly acquiesced to Trump have egg on heir collective faces.

The grand juries have been dogged in their refusal to bow to Trump’s pursuit of vengeance.

When Sean Charles Dunn, a paralegal in the Justice Department hurled his footlong Subway sandwich (turkey) at US Customs and Border Patrol agents, he was charged with a crime, fired from his job, and hauled before a grand jury. The grand jury refused to indict him. The “Sandwich Guy” was briefly a folk hero for his defiance.

Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate, said that the grand jury’s refusal to indict appeared to be an instance of jury nullification, stating that “a grand jury will typically indict a ham sandwich, but it turns out a D.C. grand jury won’t indict the guy who threw the sandwich.”

Trump told Pam Bondi to go after his enemies and she did.

She charged former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, but the grand jury refused to indict him. She charged him again, and the next grand jury did not indict him.

Bondi then went after New York State Attorney General Leticia James, who won successful convictions of Donald Trump in New York state courts.

Trump wanted her indicted for bank fraud and mortgage fraud. (DOJ allegedly received confidential information from Bill Pulte, chair of the Federal Housing Finance Agency). Eric Siebert, the first interim federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was respected by both parties, refused to bring charges because the evidence was flimsy. He resigned and was replaced by Lindsay Halligan, a personal attorney of Trump’s who had no experience as a prosecutor.

Halligan persuaded a grand jury to indict James but the prosecution was invalidated because Halligan had not been confirmed by the Senate and her predecessor had used up the 120 days when he was interim prosecutor.

Two new grand juries refused to indict James, even though they heard only the prosecutors’ evidence, not her defense. .

In another high-profile case, Secretary of Hegseth wanted to punish six members of Congress–all military veterans–who endorsed a video declaring that members of the military should not obey illegal orders. Hegseth himself was on video saying exactly the same thing a few years ago, but no matter. Trump said that their actions were “seditious” and deserved the death penalty. In another comment, he called them “traitors.” Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller said that the six were engaged in an “insurrection.”

The case was put before a grand jury by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a former FOX News host.

The grand jury unanimously refused to indict them.

Not one member of the Grand Jury supported the indictment.

In a separate case, Hegseth tried to reduce Senator Mark Kelly’s rank and pension to punish him for participating in the video. Kelly said he had free speech rights. Federal Judge Richard Leon, a Bush II appointee, enjoined Hegseth’s actions. Hegseth is appealing; he wants to bring Kelly down. His case, however, is absurd. How can a U.S. Senator be muzzled because he is a veteran? How can the Secretary of Defense be allowed to vindictively reduce the rank and pension of those who served honorably but had the temerity to speak their mind?

A few days ago, Federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts ruled that the government’s policy of deporting immigrants to third countries–countries they have never lived in–is illegal. This is an unusually cruel policy. The decision will of course be appealed.

So three cheers for the brave judges who stand up for the rights of individuals.

Three cheers for Grand Juries, especially those who think for themselves and refuse to be cowed by political bigwigs.

And two cheers for our legal system, which moves very slowly and can bankrupt anyone who does not have a pro bono lawyer.

Categories Accountability, Injustice, Justice

Trump Administration Drops Effort to Punish Major Law Firms

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2026 //
1

At the beginning of his second term, Trump demanded that many large law firms be punished because they had opposed him in the past or represented his opponents. He threatened to bar them from any federal work unless they agreed to donate millions of dollars in pro bono services to causes of his choosing. Most law firms, among the most prestigious in the country, quickly accepted Trump’s demands.

Four major law firms decided to fight the executive order. They won in federal courts. Yesterday the Trump Department of Justice announced that it was dropping its efforts to punish the four resisting firms. The ones who quickly conceded owe Trump nearly $1 billion in legal services.

As historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his book On Tyranny, Do Not Obey in Advance. The losing law firms did not fight for their independence. They obeyed in advance.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department as soon as Monday was expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey. 

Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.

While the administration lost its battle in court, the executive orders nonetheless put a lasting chill on the industry. Fear of the orders prompted nine large firms to make deals with the president, promising nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for causes favored by the administration. Many of the same firms that took a leading role opposing the Trump administration in court during his first term have shied away from taking on pro bono cases adverse to the government.

“This affected the interest of big law firms doing what they normally do, to stand up for people without representation,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “In that sense, Trump achieved something important that will linger.”

In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections. The White House had singled out these firms for representing clients including Hillary Clinton and George Soros, and for ties to figures such as Robert Mueller, who as special counsel led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The orders set off a panic among law firm leaders across the country, especially after one of the biggest firms, Paul Weiss, chose to settle with the White House rather than gamble on suing the administration.

Others chose a combative approach, arguing in a series of lawsuits that Trump’s actions amounted to unconstitutional retaliation and an abuse of executive power. The firms said the orders would be devastating to their business and that they risked losing lucrative clients that work with the federal government….

An ideological mix of judges ruled against the administration, saying the executive orders undermined bedrock principles of the U.S. legal system. In one decision, Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said blocking the sanctions was necessary to preserve an “independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting.”

Joyce Vance has an excellent post about the law firms that defended themselves and those that capitulated at once to Trump.

She wrote:

So far, four different federal judges have held the orders are unconstitutional. While one of those judges was appointed by Barack Obama and another by Joe Biden, two of them were appointed by George W. Bush— bad math for the administration. 

As for the firms that capitulated early on, they too appear to have miscalculated. Neera Tanden, who served in the White House during the Biden administration, explained the cost on Twitter:

Former Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who is now the Director of the Center for Law and Public Trust at NYU Law School, explained it like this: “The law firms that capitulated to blatantly unconstitutional orders out of fear and for increased profit undermined the rule of law and the legal profession in this country. This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying, and those that didn’t and gained nothing. Let’s hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed.”

Standing up to the bully is the right response. Yes, it requires some initial courage. But the bully ultimately backs down. And every time he does, we win. Today, we won again, thanks to some lawyers who were willing to take the risk and be brave.

Categories Accountability, Justice, Trump
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