Blog Verité

Legal analysts on Friday called a federal judge’s sharp rebuke of the Trump administration a “good barometer” of where we are in a “clash” between the president and the law.

Slate’s legal analyst, Dahlia Lithwick, spoke with colleague Mark Joseph Stern for their weekly legal podcast about a recent decision from Judge Amir Ali that resulted in accusations the Trump administration openly defied his order.

Ali ruled on the temporary restraining order for the U.S. Agency for International Development, demanding that a blanket freeze on foreign aid cease until a court decision is made. The State Department has been accused of effectively ignoring the order.

USAID provides global humanitarian efforts for the federal government and attempts to build goodwill by helping feed starving countries and give medical services to those who wouldn’t usually have access. And while its budget is relatively small compared to other agencies, public polling shows Americans believe the U.S. spends as much as 25% of its budget on foreign aid when it’s closer to 1%, according to the Brookings Institute.

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The Trump administration laid off nearly 13,000 USAID workers, reducing the agency to a few hundred people.

The State Department was dragged back into court after accusations from aid groups it refused to comply with the order, as they still don’t have the unfrozen money. They asked the judge to hold Secretary of State Marco Rubio in contempt of court and fine him thousands of dollars for each day they violated the order.

“The defendants raced back in and said they weren’t defying the order,” said Stern. “But they gave a perverse explanation as to why this was so. Ali had included a very small exception, clarifying that he wouldn’t force the defendants to maintain contracts that were already set to expire or that the contractor could no longer carry out. And so the State Department claimed that it reviewed thousands of contracts and discovered that, magically, every single one fell into that exception!”

A whistleblower came forward to dispute that, saying they didn’t go through those contracts.

Judge Ali made it clear that they’ll have a very real problem if they don’t start complying with the court orders, said Stern.

“I think that’s a really good illustration of how the courts have a limited capacity to contend with Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy. There are so many moving parts to this rampage, yet lawsuits, by their nature, can focus on only one piece of it. And even if a suit hits its target, a court might still lack the power to prevent the underlying harm,” said Stern.

He referenced another lawsuit in which unions lost their effort to stop the indiscriminate purge of the civil servant workforce.

“I’m sure Judge Christopher Cooper is aware of all that,” Stern continued, saying that the judge was almost apologetic in his decision.

“I think even the judges who have gone hardest against the administration know that at the end of the day, the courts cannot save us if they’re the only ones trying,” said Stern. “As helpful as the courts can be, their limited power and limited jurisdiction means that it’s ultimately going to be up to the voters, and Congress, to push back and say that the lawlessness must fully stop.”

Read the full discussion here.