Donald Trump and his enablers last week went from one humiliating legal defeat to another as a series of polls confirmed the American people have had it with a pathological narcissist bent on ratcheting up a forever war they don’t want, burying them in new taxes (tariffs) that worsen their struggle to get by, and plundering the treasury to glorify himself with garish monuments and tacky tributes that have marred the nation’s capitol.
Twelve Democratic state attorneys general scored a truly stunning victory over Trump and his MAGA media propaganda machine when Trump sycophant David Ellison’s Paramount agreed to halt its proposed $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery until June 2027 while a federal court considers whether to grant the AGs’ request to block the deal. The dramatic consolidation of news and entertainment businesses under the auspices of a MAGA mogul who expressly sought to curry favor with Trump had seemed like a done deal just weeks ago; now it may come to naught thanks to a major public campaign by the media/entertainment community and the diligent efforts of state AGs determined not to allow the feckless Department of Justice have the last say.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Privately, Paramount officials were worried they might lose that round before [U.S. District Judge Araceli] Martínez-Olguín, so, during negotiations with the states, Paramount stipulated that it would not close the deal on its preferred timetable.
Paramount had wanted to finalize the takeover this month — or at least have it wrapped up by Sept. 30.
In a statement, [California Atty. General Rob] Bonta celebrated the delay as “great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy.”
“Our argument against this illegal merger is straightforward: When too few corporations have too much power in markets central to American life, it makes things more expensive, and it makes things worse,” Bonta said.
The upshot: The courts still provide a backstop when ardent defenders of democracy and First Amendment freedoms refuse to roll over and play dead.
But this was hardly the only First Amendment triumph of the week. The New York Times reported:
The Justice Department on Thursday withdrew the subpoenas that sought phone records and grand jury testimony from New York Times journalists who had reported on the security capabilities of President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet.
The government acted after a federal judge grilled Justice Department lawyers for nearly an hour over their handling of the subpoenas, which The Times had sought to quash. The news outlet called the subpoenas an effort to intimidate its reporters.
As is often the case, the Justice Department’s sloppiness and utter untrustworthiness underscored the department’s shocking decline from its status as revered prosecutor for the American people to ham-handed hit men for a thin-skinned bully. (“Under the judge’s questioning, the government acknowledged factual errors in its filings. It conceded that it had omitted significant information — including that the case pertained to journalists’ records — when it asked a different federal judge to prevent a phone company from disclosing a record request,” the Times noted. “Judge Subramanian appeared especially troubled by the government’s omission of relevant details from its request for the nondisclosure order from the other federal judge.”) A full contempt proceeding against DOJ flunkies too willing to cast aside their professional obligations to curry favor with the Trump regime is long overdue.
In short, Trump’s effort to intimidate an independent press reporting on another humiliation (a defective Qatari plane “gifted” to Trump that will cost taxpayers billions to “max out” its security capabilities) resulted in further embarrassment and yet another episode in which the discredited Justice Department was left scrambling to defend its conduct in front of an irate judge. (Candidly, the dual First Amendment victories over Trump also made the attendance of so many docile legacy media journalists at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington on Friday night, where Trump insulted journalists and spewed ridiculous lies, that much more repulsive.)
Trump’s legal debacles last week extended beyond media blunders. “The Trump administration on Thursday dropped its attempts to subpoena a list of Jewish people at the University of Pennsylvania, ending more than a year of court battles between the administration and the university,” Politico reported. “Court documents filed Thursday reveal that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the university reached an agreement in which the agency will not enforce its subpoena seeking information on university employees.”
The episode stems from the Trump crowd’s tawdry scheme to use allegations of antisemitism as a cudgel against colleges and universities in its crusade to crush academic independence, savage good-faith efforts to diversify admissions, and persecute the vulnerable (e.g., LGBTQ+ athletes, international students who have exercised First Amendment rights).
Rather than knuckle and comply with the obnoxious request that triggered an uproar among Jewish students and organizations whom the Trump regime claimed to be “protecting,” Penn’s decision to resist demonstrated the degree to which the Trump authoritarian putsch is dependent on capitulation and collaboration. In the face of principled resistance, as we witnessed again, the Trump regime increasingly crumbles.
Trump’s losing streak continued on another front as well. The Justice Department scored its 17th consecutive loss, this time in Kentucky, in its effort to force states to turn over unredacted voter files. District Judge Claria Horn Boom, the eighth Trump appointee to slap down this effort, cited a Sixth Circuit ruling rebuking the Trump voting intimidation scheme. The Justice Department, beholden to the whims of a president determined to invalidate the midterms, insists on pursuing a lawless scheme, which serves only to confirm the DOJ’s lack of independence and credibility. In doing so, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche merely confirms his utter lack of independent judgment.
In sum, last week’s events underscored that when elected officials, civil society, and skillful litigators resist Trump’s authoritarian bullying, they have increasingly found judges willing to halt Trump’s totalitarian schemes. The string of victories for democracy and specifically for the First Amendment reminds us that any concessions to a faltering, rotting Trump regime is foolish. The wind is at the back of the democratic resistance. Sustained, dogged resistance has never been more important.
Sadly, the docile attendees at the WHCA dinner gave Trump a victory by sitting still while Trump threw insult after insult at members of the Press. It would have been a historic event if the attendees stood up and walked out. The WHCA should disband and a new organization take its place who will not bend the knee to a disgusting dictator.
He surrounds himself with people who shield him from reality. He has no understanding that he is losing. He is a demented recluse with no connection to the rest of the world.