MAGA loyalists, particularly Vice President J.D. Vance, have begun to suggest they will not abide by the rule of law,

 

Heather Cox Richardson:

MAGA loyalists, particularly Vice President J.D. Vance, have begun to suggest they will not abide by the rule of law, but before Trump and Vance took office, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called out Vance’s hints that he would be willing to defy the rulings of federal courts as “dangerous suggestions” that “must be soundly rejected.”

Today the American Bar Association took a stand against the Trump administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” as it attacks the Constitution and tries to dismantle departments and agencies created by Congress “without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law.”

“The American Bar Association supports the rule of law,” president of the organization William R. Bay said in a statement. “That means holding governments, including our own, accountable.” He cheered on the courts that “are treating these cases with the urgency they require.”

“[R]efusing to spend money appropriated by Congress under the euphemism of a pause is a violation of the rule of law and suggests that the executive branch can overrule the other two co-equal branches of government,” Bay wrote. “This is contrary to the constitutional framework and not the way our democracy works. The money appropriated by Congress must be spent in accordance with what Congress has said. It cannot be changed or paused because a newly elected administration desires it. Our elected representatives know this. The lawyers of this country know this. It must stop.”

From Talking Points Memo:

Trump's DoJ appears to be disorganized and incompetent:

Overnight, the Justice Department had to file two separate corrections in pending court cases to clean up misstatements of fact they made to federal judges in open court. It’s an excruciating thing for any lawyer to have to do, but especially for the Justice Department which has prided itself on being a reliable narrator and has earned, for better or worse, the benefit of the doubt in federal court.

The impact and significance of the admitted errors isn’t entirely clear yet, but they undermine the Justice Department’s credibility and make it clear to the judges involved that these are not careful, considered, prudent government actions that deserve to be treated as regular or normal.

In the Treasury-DOGE case, the Justice Department now says it was mistaken when it told the court that since-resigned DOGE associate Marko Elez was a special government employee. He was in fact a Treasury Department employee.

In the USAID case, the Justice Department admitted it was wildly wrong when it told the court that 500 employees were placed on leave. The actual number was 2,140. It also mistakenly told the court that only future USAID contracts had been frozen when in fact existing contracts had been frozen as well.

The pace of the destruction unleashed by the White House combined with its disorganization, its ham-handedness, and the lack of involvement from lawyers at the front end has created an enormous mess for the Justice Department to try to clean up in real time in court. It’s not been pretty.

Trump being sloppy and non-strategic is neither new nor a surprise, but it might provide an opening to fend off some of his worst actions in his first three weeks in office.