Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I’m having a lot of feelings right now
Somebody get Judge Reyes a bodyguard and some armor plates for under robes during court.
I’m serious, we need to protect every friend we have right now.
This legal badass giving the Trumpsters their latest hard time in court is U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes. She was appointed to the federal bench in February 2023 by Joe Biden. She was born in Uruguay and spent a lot of her early career doing pro bono work for refugees and women escaping sexual violence. She is also the first Hispanic and openly LGBTQ woman to serve on the DC District Court.
This is an important reminder of a few things. First, that if American democracy does survive the next four years (and for the record, I think it probably will, albeit badly battered), it will be because the checks-and-balances system, premised especially on the role of the judiciary, continues to function. That is why Vance and Musk are now getting their little manbaby underpants in such a whiny twist about the courts: despite the barrage of bullshit that Trump has tried to pull off by executive order, it has all gotten instantly sued and the large part of it has been firmly enjoined in the legalese equivalent of “what the fuck are you doing you stupid fuck, this is TURBO illegal so knock it off.” Yes, he’s had a few minor victories here and there, but all the big, nasty, headline-getting stuff is being pummeled in the courts, and the courts, by and large, are not having it. That is important.
This is what I mean when I say that it’s important that America has a solidly embedded tradition of civic democracy and genuine judicial authority to meaningfully constrain the executive. Trump is behaving like your average power-crazed tinpot dictator, issuing grandiose and destructive orders about nonsensical fascist bullshit. In the authoritarian countries (such as Russia, which he is yet again miserably and humiliatingly sucking up to) that he longs for the US to emulate, these would just be enacted, no more debate, because the judiciary is jammed chock-full of loyal toadies and corrupt functionaries who don’t even pretend to act independently or objectively. That is not – yet, and knock on wood it never will be – the case in America. The federal bench contains judges appointed by a multitude of presidents of vastly different ideological temperaments and policy priorities, are reviewed and confirmed by a separately elected Senate, and have broad authority to hear, rule on, and restrict pretty much anything the president does, as long as it has been sued in a court of law. Which again, it has been. (Shoutout to my state Attorney General, who has sued Trump on everything pretty much even before I can get in contact with him about it.)
This is also why the Republicans have been so fixated on the judiciary and ran their Opus Dei/Federal Society/John Birch Society long-con to stuff the benches with far-right religious-nutjob hacks. This is why Mitch Fucking McConnell played so dirty with SCOTUS and why, once all this executive-order fluster calms down, the next thing the GOP will do is locate suitable replacements for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are in their seventies. They will be convinced or “convinced” to retire like Anthony Kennedy was in 2018, so their seats can be filled by much younger and even more extreme wingnuts and lock in conservative control of SCOTUS for another generation at least. This is after Trump was already allowed to fill three seats in his first term, so five members of a nine-person court will be personally appointed by the worst orange fascist to ever assume the office of the presidency. In 2016, Hillary Clinton warned, accurately, that control of SCOTUS was at stake and that it would have dangerous consequences if Trump won for that alone, and it became an online leftist article of faith to scoff at, mock, or totally ignore her. Hmm.
Of course, Vance et al weren’t whining about the courts (and won’t whine about them) whenever they march in lockstep with Republican priorities; it’s just whenever they tell Orange God-Emperor Fuhrer Herr Trump to take a hike that they should be deemed un-American. Because this is happening with remarkable regularity right now, it’s a great time to think about why this is and to continue to educate yourself on basic civics and the functions of the three branches of government. Because the US Constitution reserves the right for the president to choose all federal judges, the fact that a Biden-appointed judge is giving the Trumpsters hell for being idiots is an important fact. (It’s also important to note that Trump’s agenda is being pushed back by judges across the political spectrum; the first judge to issue a smackdown on the birthright citizenship issue was a Reagan appointee, if you can believe it.) As such, it’s useful to think if you want a president who appoints people like Judge Reyes, or the MAGA clownshows such as Matthew Kaczynski and James Ho in Texas and Aileen Cannon in Florida, just to name a few. The right-wing nutjobs specifically go court-shopping in order to file cases before these judges, because they know they will get a favorable ruling and/or boost it on appeal to Trump judges in higher circuits and eventually to the Trump judges on the high court. Again: hmm.
The point(s) are: if American democracy gets through Trump, it will be because of the judiciary. The American judiciary is purposefully designed to meaningfully constrain the executive and at the moment, it is more or less holding up at that job, which is why the Republicans who love their own Trumpy judges are throwing their latest hypocritical shitfit. It matters who has the power to appoint judges, it is good to inform yourself about how these things work and why, and to point and laugh every time the fascists eat shit. So yes.
amhrancas 