The 3-word phrase Trump’s lawyers hope will put his agenda before Supreme Court
President Donald Trump’s lawyers keep issuing a recurring refrain as they fight legal challenges to the administration’s actions.
The government’s legal teams keeps begging the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and approve his agenda — bypassing lower courts that have blocked or paused some actions — by using the same phrase in motion after motion, reported CNN’s Joan Biskupic.
“Only this Court can end the interbranch power grab,” the lawyers wrote as they asked the justices to reverse a California judge’s order to reinstate probationary federal workers.
“Only this Court can right the ship – and the time to do so is now,” they wrote in an appeal of another order preserving Department of Education teaching-training grants.
They used the same phrase last week in an appeal of a temporary restraining order over the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, and Biksupic wrote that it’s becoming increasingly clear the administration wants the high court to sanction his moves as quickly as possible.
“The Trump legal team has repeatedly expressed a sense of urgency … and portrayed lower court judges as generating upheaval across the country,” Biskupic wrote.
“They’ve also tailored their arguments to key justices, seizing on an earlier case in which Trump lost but had the backing of four members of the bench, just one short of a majority,” she added. “They have repeated the dissenting phrasing of Justice Samuel Alito, and the three other justices on the right wing who joined him, to underscore Trump’s latest pleas. Separately, the lawyers have conspicuously referred to the writings of a fifth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.”
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The Republican majority in Congress has stood back and let the president do what he wants without much of a fight, but so far the judicial branch has seemingly operated independently of the executive branch – at least so far., the report stated.
“The Republican-controlled Congress has let Trump dash through his agenda, even as he has usurped congressional decisions on how agencies should spend funds,” Biskupic wrote. “That means the president’s ability to dissolve America’s constitutional order will ultimately rest with the judiciary and final word at the nine-member Supreme Court.”
“For the most part, the pending Trump appeals have reached the court at the earliest stage of any litigation,” she added. “As lower court judges have begun hearing lawsuits challenging Trump’s many daring initiatives, they have put many initiatives on hold while the merits of the cases are tested. But the administration has implored the justices to let it enforce the new policies before legal challenges are resolved.”