{"id":130282,"date":"2025-03-17T14:10:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thats-a-lie-judges-around-us-calling-out-trump-admin-for-underwhelming-defense-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-03-17T14:10:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:10:29","slug":"thats-a-lie-judges-around-us-calling-out-trump-admin-for-underwhelming-defense-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thats-a-lie-judges-around-us-calling-out-trump-admin-for-underwhelming-defense-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"'That's a lie': Judges around US calling out Trump admin for underwhelming defense – USA TODAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 Sham documents. Cherry-picked data. Flimsy logic.
Those were the recent condemnations of three federal judges in courtrooms sprawled across the country as they separately critiqued Trump<\/a> administration explanations for some of the president\u2019s expansive efforts to remake the federal government<\/a>.
Judges tasked with the initial review<\/a> of the more than 100 legal challenges to those efforts are not just considering the constitutionality of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s actions. Some are also calling out the administration when they think government lawyers have been playing fast and loose with the facts.
Their criticism could become an issue if any of the challenges reach the Supreme Court<\/a>. During the first Trump administration, the court blocked the Commerce Department<\/a> from including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census after finding the agency hadn\u2019t been forthcoming about its motivation.
\u201cReasoned decisionmaking under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action,\u201d Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority<\/a>. \u201cWhat was provided here was more of a distraction.\u201d
Here\u2019s a look at what happened this month:
U.S. District\u00a0Judge\u00a0William Alsup in San Francisco Thursday delivered one of the most far-reaching court defeats<\/a> in the administration’s efforts to gut the federal bureaucracy.
Alsup, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, ordered six federal agencies to reinstate tens of thousands of federal government probationary workers fired in recent weeks.
Alsup said the Justice Department tried to obfuscate that the White House had improperly ordered agencies to fire workers en masse<\/a>.
\u201cI\u2019ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years and I know how we get at the truth, and you\u2019re not helping me get at the truth,\u201d Alsup said. \u201cYou\u2019re giving me press releases, sham documents.\u201d
He also scolded the government for the bogus boilerplate reason<\/a> employees were given for their termination.\u00a0
\u201cIt is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that\u2019s a lie,\u201d he said.
A federal judge in Maryland likewise said Thursday he didn’t believe the government’s claim that the fired employees had been individually reviewed.
“On the record before the Court, this isn’t true,” wrote U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, who was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. “It is simply not conceivable that the Government could have conducted individualized assessments of the relevant employees in the relevant timeframe.”
After Alsup’s ruling, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Bay Area judge of “attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the executive branch.”
“If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for president themselves,\u201d she said in a statement.
During a Wednesday hearing<\/a> in Washington, D.C., about Trump\u2019s ban on transgender troops<\/a> in the military, Justice Department attorneys argued the courts should defer to military leaders’ judgment on the issue.
But U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden<\/a>, said the evidence offered to support that judgment mischaracterized data, including a 2021 military report.
\u201cShould I defer to the military experts who cherry-picked one part of this study, misrepresented even that and ignored the rest of it and ignored the obvious import of it?\u201d she asked.
The Defense Department had highlighted the fact that the study found 40% of transgender service members were nondeployable at some point during a one-year period.
That figure is meaningless, Reyes said, because there was no comparison offered to the deployment rate of service members overall.
Jason Manion, a Justice Department attorney, said that the 40% figure was relevant and Reyes was not supposed to second-guess the professional judgment of military leaders.
\u201cUnder the case law, you defer to the military,\u201d he said. \u201cYou do not reassess the evidence.\u201d
Last Monday, U.S. District Judge\u00a0Amir\u00a0Ali\u00a0ruled<\/a> that the Constitution doesn\u2019t allow Trump to sit on funds Congress directed be spent on humanitarian assistance and other foreign aid.
Ali, who was appointed to the bench in Washington, D.C., by Biden, also said there was no \u201crational connection\u201d between the administration\u2019s desire to scrutinize the programs and the immediate spending freeze.
\u201cDefendants have yet to offer any explanation, let alone one supported by the record, for why a blanket suspension setting off a shockwave and upending reliance interests for thousands of businesses and organizations around the country was a rational precursor to reviewing programs,\u201d Ali wrote.
Although the administration countered that the State Department exempted some programs from the freeze, Ali said the \u201crecord belies the assertion that the waivers provided any meaningful relief.\u201d
Although the judge ordered the administration to pay for aid work already completed by contractors and foreign assistance groups, he did not require the government to restart canceled contracts. Ali said that while the administration had to spend funds Congress appropriated, the State Department has discretion about how to do so.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday said the administration has permanently ended 83% of the programs that had been run by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Rubio called that<\/a> an \u201coverdue and historic reform.\u201d
The administration will have many more chances to make its case as litigation continues and could find a more receptive audience for Trump’s expansive view of presidential authority among the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
But if any of these cases or others arrive before the high court, Roberts could be on the lookout for \u201ccontrived reasons\u201d as he was in 2019 when he blocked the citizenship question on the census noting his logic: “Altogether, the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation.”<\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2013 Sham documents. Cherry-picked data. Flimsy logic.Those were the recent condemnations of three federal judges in courtrooms sprawled across the country as they separately critiqued Trump administration explanations for some of the president\u2019s expansive efforts to remake the federal government.Judges tasked with the initial review of the more than 100 legal challenges to those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}