Let Them Eat Subway
This has been an absolutely terrible week for Donald Trump on two counts - the elections and the courts.
On Tuesday, Democrats swept every notable election and their vote percentages went up all over the country as compared to 2024. Democrats won gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the mayoral election in NYC, the California redistricting referendum, statewide elections in Georgia, Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania, and statehouse races in Mississippi, Virginia, and New Jersey. They saw countless victories in municipal elections around the country.
Some of this is due to the incredible campaigns run by Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger, and Mikie Sherrill. But largely, the message sent around the country on Tuesday was that Donald Trump and everything he is doing are wildly unpopular.
The 2026 midterms are still a year away, but if you’re looking for a reason to hope, the elections on Tuesday have provided a big one. I would feel safe at the moment predicting the Democrats will regain control of the House.
In the courts, Trump had one victory this week. The Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction and will allow the government to force transgender Americans to have a gender marker on their passports matching the gender they were assigned at birth. The court has not ruled on the merits here, but is once again allowing Trump to take an action they may later find unconstitutional. This is the 24th time this year the Supreme Court has granted emergency relief to the Trump administration. This rate is drastically higher than normal. In both of Obama’s terms combined, this happened 4 times, less than once a year. This year it’s happening 50 times more often than it did under Obama.
On the whole, however, this was a terrible week for the Trump administration in court.
In Broadview, IL, a judge issued a temporary restraining order regarding the abhorrent conditions in the ICE processing center there. Like many similar facilities around the nation, this processing center was never intended to hold people long term, defined here as longer than 12 hours. The government has been ordered to provide people being held there with basic necessities like water to drink, beds, and showers.
Another judge issued a preliminary injunction against the government regarding their use of force and chemical weapons against protestors and clergy. Local Reverend Daniel Black has been hit by chemical rounds outside the Broadview facility 7 times now. The judge pointed out the government and CBP Commander Greg Bovino have both lied about what’s taken place in Chicago, saying their activities against protestors and religious gatherings “shock the conscience.”
The White House has been arguing that they cannot pay SNAP food benefits due to the shutdown. This is the opposite of what the law says. The law has a contingency fund to be tapped in case of government shutdowns. This concept has come up dozens of times this year, but Congressional spending mandates are not suggestions to the executive branch. They are laws. It is not up to Donald Trump or OMB Director Russel Vought to determine if they want to pay SNAP benefits. The law requires it. Trump said if the courts said they had to pay SNAP benefits, they’d happily do so. The courts issued a TRO compelling the government to pay SNAP benefits in accordance with the law. Payments are going out today, but the government is appealing the order, arguing the courts do not have the authority to appropriate spending. Notably here Congress already appropriated this spending and the courts are saying the government has to fulfill that spending because IT IS A LAW.
The bottom line here is that the Trump administration is currently fighting in court to make sure that SNAP recipients, mostly children, cannot buy food in opposition to the law which says they must spend this money.
Speaking of food, Sean Charles Dunn threw a sandwich at a government agent in Washington, DC in August. The government responded by forming a raid team to arrest him. They filmed said raid which was posted as propaganda by the White House. The government wanted to prosecute him for felony assault but a grand jury refused to indict him for the felony charge. He was instead charged with a misdemeanor assault charge which the government took to trial. Mr. Dunn was acquitted by a jury yesterday.
While not a loss yet, the Supreme Court this week heard oral arguments in the case regarding Trump’s tariffs. This is another situation where the Trump administration claims a power which the Constitution explicitly gives to Congress - taxation. The president is not given the authority to raise taxes outside of very specific emergency situations. From the oral arguments, the majority of the justices do not seem convinced of Trump’s arguments. While predicting what this Supreme Court will rule is never simple, I expect them to rule against Trump here at least in part.
We saw some very real victories this week in the courts and in the elections. Hold on to these moments.
I wanted to keep this positive, but something happened last night so appalling I want to include it here.
Yesterday the US military blew up another boat in international waters with no legal justification or authorization, claiming the men killed on the boat were drug traffickers. Defense Secretary last night at the Fox Nation Patriot Awards (to let you know how serious these awards are, Melania Trump was a top recipient) told a joke about how Donald Trump’s first reaction to these murders is always to ask for his phone so he can make social media posts about the men we killed.
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