... District court judges have overturned or blocked executive orders ending birthright citizenship, punishing law firms and universities, eviscerating election laws, slashing the federal workforce and freezing funds. Upwards of 650 lawsuits challenging executive orders have been brought – 10 times more than in the first year of the Biden presidency – and plaintiffs have won more than twice as often as the administration.
The jurists are losing their patience with the Trump administration, which many have criticized for noncompliance. They have rebuked the government in uncharacteristically sharp language – “deliberately ignorant”, “chilling harm of blizzard proportion”, “an assault on constitutional rights”. In at least 95 cases since August, the New York Times reports, judges have demanded that officials explain why they should not be held in civil contempt, a rarely-invoked penalty designed to force aimed at forcing compliance with the law.
Immigration has been at the center of this battle between law and disorder.
“The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt – again and again and again – to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” Patrick Schiltz, a federal district court judge in Minneapolis, declared.
Schiltz threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt – that means jail time. He is hardly a firebrand – with a reputation as a conservative, he was appointed to the bench by George W Bush. Overall, political affiliation has played no part in these cases. Judges appointed by other Republican presidents, from Reagan to Trump, have been similarly scathing in their opinions overturning Trump’s executive orders. [snip]
These district court decisions are not, of course, the final word. The administration can appeal to the court of appeals, where it has been more likely to prevail, and ultimately to the supreme court, whose Republican appointees have voted, often as a bloc, to uphold Trump’s actions.
Nonetheless, at a moment when the guardrails of democracy have proven to be made of papier mache – when, day after day, the president displays his contempt for democracy and Congress takes a 14-month siesta – these judges are the rare exception. They are doing the work that the constitution demands, and like their counterparts in the Brown v Board of Education era, they are preserving the rule of law, often at risk to themselves and their families. In these dark days, that’s cause for celebration. (our emphasis)
They're one of the last remaining speed bumps slowing the Malignant Fascist's rush to undo 250 years of American democracy (such as it was). We need the ultimate speed bump -- elections -- to really stop the rush.
A California sheriff running for governor has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he’s investigating a ballot count discrepancy.
County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections.
Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.
In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.
Bianco seized ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. He called the effort “a fact-finding mission.”
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” he said Friday. Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary that includes more than half a dozen Democrats. California runs a top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party, and sends the two candidates who get the most voters onto the November general election. [snip]
“I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County,” he said.
The effort came as President Donald Trump has repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.
Bonta has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of the letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”
The letters said Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of ballots and elections materials from the county’s elections office with a warrant in February. At issue, Bianco said, is a discrepancy a citizen group reported between the handwritten ballot intake logs and the number of votes reported to the state.
Bianco said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a difference elections officials have refuted at county meetings, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They argue the handwritten rolls, which were not relied on to check the count, were being kept by temporary elections workers who had worked long days and may have made mistakes.
Bianco said Friday that the count had started and stopped, but would now resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge.
Another voter fraud conspiracy crackpot who's trying to screw up the results of the special election that authorized redistricting to counter the Malignant Fascist's redistricting ploys in red states. Guess he didn't want to wait for Kash "No Credit" Patel's FBI to carry out a raid a la Fulton County, GA. But we question who the Democratic Attorney General is reduced to sending letters (!) to this crank because we were under the impression the AG is the top law enforcement officer in the state, not some crazy cowf*ckeer with a badge. Is it possible for you to grow some balls, sir?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said President Donald Trump could get “somebody killed” after the president accused Democrats of being the country’s “greatest enemy” after Iran.
On Sunday, the president posted, “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!” Trump also said Saturday that “Radical Left Democrats have hurt so many people with their vicious and uncaring ways” and that “Fascist Democrats will never protect America.”
In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Jeffries replied, “Donald Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut before he gets somebody killed.”
In recent years, targeted political violence has escalated, and political leaders in both parties have tried to tackle the growing crisis.
A January report from the U.S. Capitol Police found that threats toward members of Congress, their families, staff and the Capitol complex surged in 2025, with over 5,000 more incidents reported than the previous year.
The report came after multiple political figures were killed or targeted last year. In September, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking on a college campus. Just weeks before, former Minnesota State Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband were assassinated in their home. And in April last year, a man threw multiple incendiary devices into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion as Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were asleep inside... (our emphasis)
Every accusation is a confession, as they say, and as for who's the enemy of America, look at who's destroying democracy, maneuvering to be a dictator, cozying up to America's long-time adversary Russia, weakening our economy, undercutting our national security, and who's setting Americans up against each other, etc., etc.
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