Seattle-based district court Judge John Coughenour — appointed to the federal bench by noted lefty President Ronald Reagan — is already on record that he is not at all a fan of Donald Trump’s unilateral effort to rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment and end birthright citizenship. He’s overseeing a case to stop Trump’s executive order brought by four states and individual pregnant immigrant plaintiffs. The initial restraining order Coughenour issued on the enforcement of the executive order was set to expire, but yesterday the judge granted the states’ effort to block the EO with a preliminary injunction.
Coughenour isn’t the first to enjoin the order ahead of its February 18th effective date, but he made a stirring statement in defense of the rule of law and against the “clearly unconstitutional” effort of Trump to amend the constitution “under the guise of an executive order.” As reported by Law360:
“It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Judge Coughenour said at a hearing Thursday. “The rule of law is, according to him, is something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. “Nevertheless, in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow,” the judge said. “… I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”
Judge Coughenour continued, “We are all citizens subject to the rule of law.” Adding, “No amount of policy debate can change that. And the fact that the government has cloaked what is effectively a constitutional amendment under the guise of an executive order is equally unconstitutional.”
“If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself. That’s how the Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works,” the judge said. “Because the president’s order attempts to circumscribe this process, it is clearly unconstitutional.”
Powerful stuff — particularly coming from a Republican-appointed judge.
Pure_Engineering6423 on February 9th, 2025 at 16:05 UTC »
Reagan is the reason we are all in this mess!! The rich used to have a 70 percent tax and he brought it down to 30 percent. The rest is history. Fuck Reagan
gmb92 on February 9th, 2025 at 15:32 UTC »
Republican John Kelly, DT's longest-serving Chief of Staff, essentially said the same thing.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly told the Times that Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.
Why can't more Republicans just admit they support fascism? Why does a word that accurately describes what they enthusiastically support upset them?
Funkymonkeyhead on February 9th, 2025 at 15:23 UTC »
Reagan would be a full on Commie in the eyes of the MAGA crowd if he were still alive.
Of course many of the problems we’re facing today are due to the policies of his administration but that’s another story.