Bravo to the judges speaking the truth to Trump in Chicago and Portland | Steven Greenhouse

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

67% : In a slap at Trump, Immergut also wrote that his directive to Hegseth was “not ‘conceived in good faith’”.
57% : And that will be a very big step toward Trump bringing martial law to city after city and state after state.
53% : It’s past time for the supreme court to be far more clear-eyed and less deferential toward Trump.
50% : And at a time when the United States supreme court has been so craven and deferential toward Trump, it was gratifying to see that these lower court judges had the guts to do what the high court’s six conservative justices have been utterly unwilling to do: speak truth to Trump’s power.
50% : As Trump seeks to deploy the national guard to city after city, he has peddled untruth after untruth about Portland and Chicago.
50% : Trump likened Chicago to “a war zone” and said federal facilities in Illinois “have come under coordinated assault by violent groups”.
50% : Trump still maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.
50% : The Washington Post found that Trump made an outrageously high 30,573 false or misleading statements in his first four years as president.
50% : After Trump sought to deploy national guard troops to Portland, state and city officials went to federal court to seek an emergency order to block Trump’s plans.
50% : District court judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, wrote that judges owe “a great level of deference” to presidents, but she was nonetheless wise enough and brave enough not to swallow everything Trump said about the situation in Portland.
50% : On 27 September, Trump sent a directive ordering Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to provide “all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland”.
50% : ”She noted that the day before Trump issued his directive, law enforcement in Portland had “observed approximately eight to 15 people at any given time out front of Ice.
50% : In seeking to justify the deployment, Trump asserted that Chicago was “like a war zone”, but Judge Perry found there was no evidence that order couldn’t be maintained with just regular forces, ie without the national guard.
50% : Like Immergut, Perry was courageous and clear-eyed in calling out Trump and his administration for their lack of credibility.
50% : Ever since Trump returned to office, the supermajority has ruled repeatedly in his favor, often acting as if Trump is a benign, truth-telling president acting in good faith to comply with the law.
50% : Far too often the conservative supermajority has treated Trump like an innocent lamb as it has acceded to his power-grabs – most notably, his efforts to fire officials from independent agencies and to seize more and more of Congress’s spending powers.
50% : If the conservative supermajority defers to Trump, accepts his “untethered” claims about a supposed emergency situation and allows troops to be sent in, that will dangerously open the door to Trump sending troops into any and every city he wants.
49% : Energy was low, minimal activity” – far from a “war-ravaged” city with “domestic terrorists”.
49% : The conservative justices seem blind to the reality that Trump is the most authoritarian-minded president in US hist0ry, one for whom district court judges felt the need to issue over 180 orders – an extraordinary number – blocking or temporarily pausing Trump’s actions because they deemed those actions unlawful.
48% : Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues
37% : Noting that the US has a long “tradition of resistance to government overreach” and “military intrusion into civil affairs,” she warned of Trump’s assault on “this historical tradition,” which “boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.”

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.