Eureka! Found: A Federal Judge in DC Who Decides Cases According to the Letter of the Law!

Why didn’t anyone think of that before? What next?

We are in what may best be described as a swarm of Federal Judges vying for the title of the most audacious giver of laws violating the President’s Article II executive powers under the Constitution and the one whose audacity will get his or her ruling to the Supreme Court first. While we proles down here where we live with and interact with average, law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens everyday of our life may find it impossible to understand how a lawyer who took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States when they were anointed appointed to a position as high and lofty and prestigious as a Federal Judgeship could work so assiduously to find a way- any way- to subvert that very Constitution and its very clear directive that “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Just in the past few days we have seen Judges like Judge Amir, Judge Howell, Judge Chutkan and Judge Boasberg, all of the District Court of the District of Columbia, spending entire forests of trees and barrels of ink putting out elaborately convoluted opinions to find a way to deny this President, elected by one of the largest majorities of both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in American history the proper exercise of his Article II executive power –“the” executive power which the Constitution directs “shall” be vested in him. It does not say “except for a Judge who despises that President with such white-hot passion that she makes statements in open court declaring he should not be “walking free” such as Judge Chutkan has done. It does not say “except for a Judge who despises the President so much that she could issue an opinion stating, “the President is not a King” and is attempting to govern like a monarch.” However, phrases very similar to those have been made by some of these Judges in recent rulings deliberately intruding upon the President’s constitutionally accorded executive power.

Imagine, then, my astonishment when I learned this morning of a ruling by a Judge of that same court, Judge Trevor McFadden (appointed, for those who like to know these things, by President Trump, not by Presidents Obama or Biden), who held in one of the many disputes over efforts by the Trump administration to reduce waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending -this one by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops- that a law actually should be applied according to its plain language and words, no matter whether that outcome is the one the judge would have personally chosen. The case is made even more notable in that it presented issues very similar to the one decided by Judge Amir in which, on review by the Supreme Court, Justice Alito wrote an opinion strongly suggesting, among other things, that Judge Amir did not have jurisdiction to decide that case in the first place. That is exactly the issue on which Judge McFadden based his position and one which Judge Amir to this day refuses to even consider, despite the strong opinion by Justice Alito that he should do so. That case is thoroughly discussed in an excellent analysis entitled The USAID Case: Judge Amir Ali’s $2 Billion Defiance Escalates , a thorough reading of which I highly recommend for a fuller understanding of the lengths to which the judge went to assure that he would be known as not only the first Muslim-American Federal Judge ever appointed but as the one who ordered the President 90% of the voters in his hometown voted against to pay out 2 Billion dollars of taxpayers’ money he did not want to pay out.

Here, from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. Department of State, are a few passages from the Court’s opinion which should convey the thinking of this judge, so rare in the judicial environment he occupies:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops seeks an emergency preliminary injunction preventing the Government from pausing or canceling contracts between them. These contracts require the Government to fund the Conference’s provision of resettlement services to refugees. But this Court cannot offer the requested relief. The Conference’s motion is, at its core, seeking a purely contractual remedy. And the Tucker Act instructs that all contract disputes with the Government must be resolved by the Court of Federal Claims. More, the Conference’s desired remedy is inconsistent with equitable remedies like injunctions. The Court thus denies the Conference’s motion.

[snip]

In short, the Conference alleges that, over the last several weeks, the Government paused and then reneged on its contracts. At issue here is not whether the Government had the right to do so, much less whether the Government was right to do so. No, the question is far narrower: Whether this Court has the authority to afford the “drastic” emergency relief that the Conference seeks. F.T.C. v. Exxon Corp., 636 F.2d 1336, 1343 (D.C. Cir. 1980). It does not.

Judge McFadden closes with words which should be music to the ears of many who are questioning whether some members of the Federal Judiciary have attempted to arrogate unto themselves the power of the executive by using every means at their disposal to circumvent the exercise of that power by the one in whom it is exclusively vested: The President. In phrasing which must surely have his colleagues on that court wondering whether he has taken leave of his senses, he made this declaration, and in view of my respect for the memory of the Justice I mention I do not make this statement lightly, worthy of one of the great Justices in the history of the High Court, Justice Antonin Scalia:

This Court is but a creature of the trifurcated structure of its Constitution. It is perhaps when emotions are at their zenith that the imperative to police jurisdictional bounds carries the most importance.

I have written often recently about this developing tsunami of rulings impinging on the President’s executive power and have made the mistake of occasionally leaping at what I have called “glimmers of hope” that this tide may be turned back only to have those hopes dashed by a later decision. This time I believe some real optimism is in order as this is a judge who abides by the law as it is written. Admittedly, there is a measure of tragedy involved in finding such unusual promise and hope in a judge who does what many of us thought judges were supposed to be doing all along, but that is the world we were left by the Obama-Biden years of rot and radicalism.

Perhaps, just maybe, we are starting to see these waves receding toward a return to the kind of legal interpretation for which Justice Scalia stood so steadfastly and for which Justices Alito and Thomas now stand in that hallowed tradition.

Hope, after all, really does spring eternal.