Tag Archives: Justice Elena Kagan

USA Today: ‘Spaghetti against the wall?’ Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration is fighting to kill 40 court orders blocking its new policies.

  • Solicitor General John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to halt nationwide injunctions against Trump policies but said if class-action lawsuits took their place, he would oppose them too.
  • Legal experts said if the Supreme Court abolishes nationwide injunctions, Trump could cut his losses by limiting the reach of court rulings that go against him.

As the Trump administration fights to kill 40 court orders blocking some of his most controversial or aggressive new policies, legal experts say the government’s strategy is to break the cases apart, into individual disputes, to delay an eventual reckoning at the Supreme Court.

One called President Donald Trump’s legal strategy a “shell game.” Another said government lawyers were “throwing spaghetti against the wall” to see what sticks.

“Their bottom line is that they don’t think these cases should be in court in the first place,” said Luke McCloud, a lawyer at Williams and Connolly who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “They are looking for a procedural mechanism that will make it the most challenging to bring these sorts of cases.”

‘Spaghetti against the wall?’ Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies
Some of Trump’ most aggressive policy changes are being blocked by judges all the way to the Supreme Court. To some, the response feels like a shell game.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/17/trump-legal-strategies-federal-judges-injunctions/83673013007

Raw Story: Trump’s DOJ screwed up by rushing the ‘worst possible case’ to the Supreme Court: expert

Posted on by
Reply

A decision to send Solicitor General John Sauer to defend an executive order signed by Donald Trump before the Supreme Court this week was a massive mistake that could haunt the president going forward.

That is the opinion of conservative lawyer George Conway who appeared on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday morning where he was asked to weigh in by co-hosts Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Daniels and fill-in host María Teresa Kumar.

Discussing Trump’s attempts to undermine birthright citizenship enshrined by the 14th Amendment, Conway asserted the DOJ used the wrong case at the wrong time.

“This is the worst possible case and that was Justice [Elena] Kagan, former Solicitor General Kagan’s point,” he began. “To bring up to the Supreme Court on the procedural technical issue of when you can issue a nationwide injunction.”

“You want to go up on a case where you’re going to you have a chance of winning, where the court thinks that, ultimately, your position is right,” he stated.

Trump’s DOJ screwed up by rushing the ‘worst possible case’ to the Supreme Court: expert

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supreme-court-2672034883

Daily Express: Supreme Court justice mocks Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider ending the judicial power for sweeping injunctions, but did not ask for a ruling on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.

President Donald Trump has been ridiculed by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan after he proposed to put an end to birthright citizenship.

Appointed by former President Barack Obama, Kagan chastised the U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer for not challenging Trump’s orders and for challenging the judicial authority to issue nationwide injunctions, a move that makes no sense for the administration’s ultimate goal.

…

“Nobody is going to lose this case,” Kagan said, stating that any parent whose kids are denied American citizenship can uphold the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil.

“It’s just, you’re going to have, like, individual by individual by individual, and all of those individuals are going to win,” Kagan said.

She added that the only people who could lose are the ones who cannot afford to challenge the administration.

Before Sauer could answer, Kagan cut him off again.

Sauer began, “The tools that are provided to address hypotheticals like this…”

And a coup de grâce from Justice Kagan:

“This is not a hypothetical. This is happening out there, right? Every court has ruled against you,” Kagan said.

Supreme Court justice mocks Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider ending the judicial power for sweeping injunctions, but did not ask for a ruling on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.

https://www.the-express.com/news/politics/171847/supreme-court-justice-mocks-trumps

Raw Story: ‘Oof’: Legal experts shocked by Trump DOJ proposal revealed in big Supreme Court hearing

Posted on by
Reply

University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman wrote her own comical paraphrasing of U.S. Supreme Court justices’ comments. In one case, she pointed out Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “partial list of the SCOTUS precedents (4) this order violates.”

Litman then paraphrased Chief Justice John Roberts in her own words.

“Chief: let’s stop this murder, please,” she quipped.

In one exchange, Justice Elena Kagan asked, if they assume this is a completely illegal executive order, how do the courts actually stop it?

Sauer said it would file a class action.

Kagan said that he would then argue that there isn’t a class to certify under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Sauer agreed, so Kagan asked what other options there were.

Sauer suggested every affected individual would sue.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned if Sauer was seriously proposing such an idea.

Litman wrote her own paraphrasing: “Oh dang Elena Kagan ‘assume you’re really f—— wrong and this order is wildly illegal. Are you saying every individual child has to sue to establish their citizenship?'”

Lawyer and journalist at Rewire, Imani Gandy commented, “Every child of undocumented immigrants has to file their own lawsuit. Millions of lawsuits. Makes perfect sense.”

Civil litigator Owen Barcala posted on Bluesky, “This is such a good point, I’m frustrated I didn’t see it. If the gov issues a clearly illegal order that applies to millions and it is losing in every individual case, why would it ever appeal the losses? So what if they can’t enforce it as to a dozen people if they can still do it for millions?”

MSNBC and Just Security legal analyst Adam Klasfeld cited a debate between Sotomayor and Solicitor General John Sauer.

“Sotomayor notes that barring nationwide injunctions, as the Trump admin asks, would mean that courts would be powerless to stop a ‘clearly, indisputably unconstitutional’ act, taking every gun from every citizen. We couldn’t stop that?” Klasfeld posted on Bluesky, quoting the justice.

&c.

https://www.rawstory.com/birthright-citizenship-2672024689

USA Today: Trump uses Supreme Court birthright citizenship case in bid to limit judges’ power

Posted on by
Reply

President Trump is counting on the Supreme Court to limit the ability of judges to put his policies on hold while they’re being challenged.

Judges across the country have blocked some of President Donald Trump’s biggest policy changes − roadblocks the president has called “toxic and unprecedented.”

Trump is counting on the Supreme Court to fix that.

How inclined the justices might be to do so could become apparent on May 15 when the court considers Trump’s move to end automatic citizenship for children born in the United States regardless of whether their parents are citizens or permanent residents.

The president hasn’t yet asked the high court to consider the legality of his policy – which was called “blatantly unconstitutional” by the first judge to review it.

Instead, Trump wants the justices to narrow the scope of multiple court orders keeping his new rules on hold until the citizenship policy has been fully litigated.

The administration argues that, for now, Trump should be able to impose the change on everyone except the 18 parents named in the lawsuits or, at most, any member of two immigrant rights groups or residents of a state that challenged the policy.

Trump uses Supreme Court birthright citizenship case in bid to limit judges’ power
President Trump is counting on the Supreme Court to limit the ability of judges to put his policies on hold while they’re being challenged.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/11/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-trump/83541130007