Thursday, November 20

Tough times for President Donald Trump. His attempted lawfare against political opponents is falling apart. His many domestic military deployments are faltering. And the Supreme Court appears poised to undo his tariffs. Sad!

In short, Trump’s legal endeavors are buckling under scrutiny, and he may receive a wave of court losses in the coming weeks. That would undermine his bid to wield the government against his enemies and use the military as a police force.

Also this week, we spotlight the election deniers now embedded inside his administration — and the risks they pose to future elections.

Small housekeeping announcement: Next week, the Opposition is taking a break for Thanksgiving. Expect our next newsletter on Thursday, Dec. 4.

Thank you very much for reading. Please reach out to me at knutson@democracydocket.com if you have any thoughts or concerns.

Jacob Knutson, reporter

Trump’s legal efforts are collapsing on multiple fronts

As the Supreme Court appears poised to undo Trump's long-championed tariffs and complicate his many domestic military deployments, his first try at lawfare against perceived political enemies is also falling apart. And with lower court losses mounting for the DOJ, several of Trump’s legal undertakings may be on the brink of collapse.
It’s getting messy. Trump’s attempt to turn the DOJ into his own personal law firm has unleashed chaos within the department. Hobbled by numerous resignations and firings and a deepening morale crisis, the DOJ may be struggling to defend itself against high-profile lawsuits.
In response to setbacks — including his political retreat on Congress’s near unanimous vote to release the Epstein files — Trump is lashing out, publicly turning on his allies, ridiculing journalists more harshly than normal and ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ to take even more extreme actions.

DOJ’s first crack at vengeance is foundering

Around two months after Trump publicly ordered Bondi to go after his foes more aggressively, the DOJ’s initial attempt at legal retribution against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James may be on the cusp of faltering.
In response to the charges against them, Comey and James have both filed several different motions to dismiss — all of which have a fair shot at being granted.
The leading dismissal motion is Comey and James’ consolidated claim that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former attorney, was illegally appointed as an acting U.S. attorney and therefore unlawfully sought indictments against them. The judge overseeing those claims said he would rule before Thanksgiving.
In a hearing yesterday over a separate motion to dismiss from Comey, the DOJ admitted that Halligan never presented the charging indictment against the former FBI chief to the grand jury. It’s a massive, bizarre discrepancy, suggesting that Comey was never formally charged with a crime.
That was just one of several inconsistencies that a magistrate judge raised in a ruling Monday requiring the DOJ to give Comey all of the materials it presented to a grand jury to secure the indictment against him — a move that almost never happens in criminal proceedings.

Read more >>>

Democracy Docket is tracking the 76 most important Trump accountability lawsuits fighting the administration’s power grabs. Click here to find out which ones have succeeded so far.

Trump’s domestic military deployments appear shaky, too

Trump’s opening attempts at enmeshing the military in policing appear on the verge of crumbling as well.
The Supreme Court is considering a technical question about the law Trump used to federalize thousands of National Guard troops for deployments in major Democratic-led cities. But the court’s answer to that question could undermine almost all of Trump’s deployment so far.
For complex reasons, that ruling, which could come any day now, wouldn’t affect Trump’s military intervention in D.C. or the Memphis deployment he strong-armed from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R).
However, earlier this week, a state judge temporarily halted Lee from maintaining troops in Memphis, finding that local elected officials will likely succeed in arguing that the deployment violated Tennessee law. D.C. is also disputing Trump’s ongoing occupation of the nation’s capital.
The Pentagon’s pending decision to withdraw hundreds of federalized California and Texas Guard soldiers from Chicago, Illinois, and Portland, Oregon, may indicate that the government believes the numerous legal challenges to Trump’s deployment aren’t going in his favor.

Read more >>>

Dive Deeper: Trump’s administration is full of election deniers — they’re already working to rig the vote

Since Trump returned to the White House, the president has made it clear that suppressing the vote is among his administration’s top priorities. Fueling his anti-voting efforts are election deniers in key roles, Democracy Docket’s Matt Cohen reports.

Once-fringe figures are now serving in prominent positions in the Trump administration, emboldened to continue peddling election conspiracies and, even more troublingly, to undermine the fairness of future contests.
Trump’s election denial hires include Marci McCarthy, who spread lies about the results of the 2020 election but now heads the agency that previously worked to curb online disinformation.
They also include officials like Heather Honey, the founder of a Pennsylvania-based anti-voting group who's now working directly on voting policy.

Read more >>>

To do list

This holiday season, several groups are organizing boycotts against major companies that have either complied in advance or are actively supporting the Trump administration’s extreme policies. You can find out more about the boycott during this virtual event tonight at 8 p.m. ET.

Odds and ends

Bondi thanks Trump for political Epstein probe: Marking a new low for the DOJ, Bondi thanked Trump for directing her to investigate ties convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a longtime friend and former confidant of Trump’s — had with prominent Democrats and institutions. The order came just days after emails released by the House indicated that Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes.
Todd Blanche declares ‘war’ on judiciary: In a speech before the Federalist Society earlier this month, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche urged young lawyers to join the DOJ's "war" against "rogue activist judges” and state bar associations.
Judge to pursue with contempt probe: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in a hearing this week that he intends to go forward with contempt proceedings over whether Trump officials willfully disregarded one of his court orders blocking removals to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador.

Quote of the week

In recent filings, more than 100 former senior DOJ officials, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, urged federal judges to dismiss the DOJ’s cases against Comey and James, arguing that they represent a “grave” threat for the “rule of law and free society in this Nation more broadly.”

“If this kind of vindictively targeted indictment is allowed to stand, it would send a dangerous signal, short-circuiting whatever internal guardrails remain within the Department, and emboldening the government to target others in exactly the way that then-Attoney General [Robert H.] Jackson feared: for ‘being personally obnoxious to or in the way of’ the Executive Branch.

“That would carry obvious chilling effects on private citizens’ speech and conduct, as well as their basic sense of freedom and security. And it would risk a grave erosion of public confidence in the Department of Justice that is essential for the Department to be able to conduct its vital work.”