Just hours into his second term, Donald Trump has been hit with multiple different lawsuits. The lawsuits are challenging his spate of lawless executive orders that he signed from a big boy desk in front of a crowd of his economically anxious supporters who left thousands of dollars worth of their belongings outside of the Capitol One Arena Monday afternoon.
The lawsuits target everything from Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional executive order that reinterprets the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, to his toothless Department of Government Efficiency advisory commission.
And more lawsuits could be on the way.
The ACLU sued Trump over his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, which is plainly guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
Trump’s executive order states that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to people born to undocumented parents, and thus those people should not be given birth certificates. From the order:
Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
The ACLU said in its lawsuit that this order violates the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
“The Supreme Court conclusively determined that all children born in the United States are citizens, subject only to very limited exceptions,” the ACLU lawsuit said of the Wong Kim Ark decision.
“This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration’s overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail.”
Trump’s executive order creating DOGE, meanwhile, was hit with three lawsuits, all of which allege that the fake government department violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, which defines how such committees operate.
Elon Musk
The public interest law firm National Security Counselors was first out the gate in suing the advisory commission led by co-President and Nazi saluter Elon Musk. (DOGE was also supposed to be led by billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, but Ramaswamy was reportedly ousted before his job even began. He is preparing to launch a bid for governor in Ohio, as his fetish for losing elections can’t be suppressed.)
The NSC lawsuit says that under the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, DOGE is considered a “federal advisory committee” and thus must “be balanced in terms of points of view represented,” have public meetings held with 15 days of advance notice and have minutes available to the public. DOGE follows none of those rules.
A second lawsuit from six public interest groups, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also alleges that DOGE violates FACA.
“DOGE’s unchecked secrecy, access, and private influence—bought by political loyalty—is anathema to efficient, effective government. Indeed, any federally endorsed, but fundamentally private, advisory effort to shape how our government serves the American people must comply with federal transparency laws, including FACA. Defendants have not done so,” the lawsuit states.
And a third suit from Public Citizen, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and the American Federation of Government Employees, also says DOGE is in violation of FACA.
“AFGE will not stand idly by as a secretive group of ultra-wealthy individuals with major conflicts of interest attempt to deregulate themselves and give their own companies sweetheart government contracts while firing civil servants and dismantling the institutions designed to serve the American people,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
Finally, the National Treasury Employees Union filed suit over Trump’s executive order that seeks to make it easier for him to fire federal employees.
“When establishing hiring principles, Congress determined that most federal government jobs be in the merit-based, competitive service. And it established that most federal employees have due process rights if their agency employer wants to remove them from employment. Because the Policy/Career Executive Order attempts to divest federal employees of these due process rights, it is contrary to congressional intent,” the lawsuit states.
“This order is about administering political loyalty tests to everyday employees in the federal workforce who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and serve their country,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement to Bloomberg Law.
Of course, Trump doesn’t care about following the law, as he thinks he is above it, so it’s unclear if he would even follow court orders that arise from these lawsuits. Already, he is blatantly violating the law that banned TikTok by signing an executive order pausing the app ban.
NPR reported:
While Trump’s executive action Monday attempts to clarify the legal landscape for TikTok, Constitutional scholar Alan Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School said trying to extend the law’s start date and insulate companies from liability does not change an act of Congress.
“Those actions do not stop the law from being in effect. And it does not stop, let’s say, Oracle, from violating the law — which, as far as I can tell, it is doing right now,” Rozenshtein said.
So much for Republicans being the party of law and order.
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