Trump flouts lower court rulings in unprecedented display of executive power
Trump flouts lower court rulings in unprecedented display of executive power
Trump flexes executive power with unprecedented flouting of lower court rulings
The Trump administration has been found in violation of court rulings in an extraordinary number of lawsuits on a broad set of issues.
When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.
Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.
By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”
Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in Donald Trump’s second term.