Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy
Trump and Musk are testing the limits, trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state — but they can’t do it unless we allow them to do so.

Chris Geidner
Feb 11, 2025

President Donald Trump and shadow-president Elon Musk are losing. ... When Justice Department lawyers go to court, trying to defend many of Trump and Musk’s actions, DOJ has regularly lost — and often face tense moments in court before being dealt those losses.

On Monday, for example, Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, heard arguments over a group of doctors’ lawsuit challenging the removal of webpages and datasets by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of the government-wide censorship purge put into effect following Trump’s January 20 executive order defining “sex” to exclude transgender people.

James Harlow, the DOJ lawyer defending the Trump administration’s actions, kept trying to insist this was mere "website maintenance" and couldn't constitute final agency action — a necessary step in challenging the policy. ... Bates wasn't buying it, eventually telling Harlow that “termination” of the sites seemed pretty final to him.

Later in Harlow’s argument, it got more heated, with Bates sternly telling the DOJ lawyer not to question him — prompting a quick, and unusual, apology.

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