Show us the tariff money, and 35 judges can’t be wrong
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/30/800046882/series/show-us-the-tariff-money-and-35-judges-cant-be-wrong/
Show us the tariff money, and 35 judges can’t be wrong
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
This week reminds us just how bleak it must be for federal judges to deal with this administration day in and day out. Whether it is playing shenanigans with tariff refunds or pretending to be clueless about freedom of speech, these people are stupidly tiresome and tiresomely stupid.
The federal trade court is so very over this administration
Dealing with an administration utterly devoted to bad behavior has got to be exhausting. And the poor sods at the Court of International Trade are in an especially bad spot because they have to deal with all the refunds of President Donald Trump’s illegal tariffs.
Judge Richard Eaton has ordered Rodney Scott, the head of Customs and Border Protection, to appear next month for a little chat about the administration’s compliance with his order to return the $166 billion it took from importers. Perhaps Eaton was not terribly impressed with the government’s April filing that it was only going to be able to give back $127 billion and also doing stuff manually is way too hard, so you can’t expect the administration to do that.
Wait, what? You see, the refund system the government built doesn’t let importers get back the taxes they paid on those illegal tariffs. So the solution is apparently just to say that $39 billion just can’t be given back? That seems bad.
Eaton is also a wee bit worried that there are millions of entries for which the government has provided no plan whatsoever to address. That also seems less than great.
But at least we can look forward to doing this all over again when the administration has to start refunding the newish tariffs Trump imposed under a different law after the Supreme Court told him that the ones he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were illegal. What fun!
These retired judges know what’s up
The second Trump administration has given us no shortage of genuinely unprecedented judicial happenings. Even without looking it up, we can say with certainty that no previous president was the subject of a motion by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges asking to reopen the sham court case he filed against his own agency so that he could get a sham settlement for his insurrectionist pals.
All of this came about because Trump hit a little speed bump in his lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion. The judge ordered the parties to explain how, exactly, this was a real lawsuit since Trump was functionally on both sides of it. There was no way that was going to happen, so Trump dropped his meritless lawsuit in exchange for $1.776 billion for treason enthusiasts.
The former judges want Judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the case to examine whether the sham settlement was a fraud on the court. Williams’ order closing the case said there was no “settlement of record,” which was true at the moment, but the signed treason slush fund settlement popped up just a few hours later, complete with details about the fund, followed the next day by a little surprise of complete immunity for Trump, his family, and his businesses for any tax filings before the date of the settlement.
Per the former judges, this timeline shows the parties colluded to avoid Williams’ inquiry into whether this was even a real case and deliberately filed a notice of dismissal before the settlement saw the light of day, even though the settlement agreement itself still had the case caption. In other words, it looks a lot like Trump and the DOJ used the judicial system to open a case that was never a real dispute as a basis for a collusive fake settlement and made sure the judge couldn’t inquire about any of it.
It’s an incredibly long shot, but why not? It’s worth trying pretty much anything to stop the DOJ and Trump from having unfettered freedom to hand out $1.776 billion taxpayer dollars to the worst people on earth.
The administration gets a much-needed First Amendment refresher
Only a few days into his second term, Trump dropped an executive order, Restoring America’s Fighting Force, that banged on about his usual obsessions and banned military academies from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating” any “divisive concepts” or “gender ideology.” Also forbidden? Saying that any of America’s founding documents are racist or sexist. Sure, whatever.
West Point’s policy implementing this vague nonsense required professors to obtain approval from department heads before engaging with any external audiences in podcasts, journals, conferences, interviews, social media posts, and so on, if they were using any West Point affiliation or branding. The policy also barred professors from expressing personal opinions in the classroom.
A civilian law professor, Tim Bakken, sued, explaining that prior restraint of speech by the government is sorta kinda against the First Amendment. Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel agreed, requiring her to write 85 pages of Free Speech 101 for the administration. Seibel’s preliminary injunction blocks both the prior approval requirement and the restrictions on speech in the classroom. This applies only to civilian professors, as military personnel who are also professors are subject to stricter restrictions.
Judge Siebel also made sure to let the government know that somehow, even with all that terrifying free speech, West Point students will manage just fine: “They are not snowflakes who will somehow be harmed by learning about controversial issues or competing viewpoints. They will not somehow be weakened in their future defense of our country if their classroom discussions are robust and open.”
A matching set of ethics complaints, part one
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is facing a bar complaint in New York. Given that we are talking about Blanche, there’s a wide variety of unethical behavior to choose from. This particular complaint, however, is about his behavior in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case.
Last week, a federal judge granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution. No small part of that decision was about Blanche’s role, especially because Blanche made it easy. Did you know it is not a good idea, if you are a prosecutor, to go on Fox News and admit that you started a criminal investigation only after Abrego Garcia prevailed in his habeas case and the judge ordered the administration to bring him home? Blanche apparently did not know this.
Since the judge’s decision laid out Blanche’s antics in great detail, the Campaign for Accountability was able to just slide all that right into their request that the bar maybe have a little look-see as to just how many attorney ethics rules Blanche blew through.
A matching set of ethics complaints, part two
Not to be left out, former Attorney General Pam Bondi is also facing a bar complaint. Congrats!
Last year, the Florida Bar declined to look into Bondi’s genuinely impressive list of ethics violations, but Bondi no longer enjoys the protection of being a Cabinet official. Pam, meet your new, improved, updated, longer bar complaint!
Do you think there are other former attorneys general who are the subject of a complaint signed by three separate watchdogs, a retired chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, and well over 100 retired judges, professors, and lawyers? Seems unlikely.
The administration may likely try to lend a hand to Bondi even though she’s no longer at the DOJ. Not out of the goodness of its heart, silly. An investigation into Bondi’s actions while she was attorney general is by definition an investigation into the administration’s actions, and we can’t have that.
The problem for the administration is that some of Bondi’s ethical issues are not ones that can be brushed off by yelling that the president can do whatever he wants and so can anyone in his administration. Some of the allegations are about how Bondi handled the release of the Epstein files. Screwing up redactions so badly that you outed victims while simultaneously running cover for your boss is not actually anything that falls under the unitary executive theory.
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