SCOTUS Sends Secret Message to Stop Trump Order
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This has been your Wayfair style tip to keep those interiors superior. Did Justice Sotomayor of the Supreme Court just outmaneuver and outfox the Department of Justice and Donald Trump? I think she did. There is a new fight that's brewing between the Department of Justice and Judge Murphy in Massachusetts today.

Because a Supreme Court decision that just came down two or three days ago, in which the Supreme Court said in the DVD case that they were going to block Judge Murphy's injunction that he entered back in April, April the 18th, to stop the Trump administration from deporting people.

without due process, without proper notice, to third countries like South Sudan and Libya until he had an opportunity to determine whether their due process rights had been violated or not. That was the injunction. The Trump administration takes an emergency appeal. The Supreme Court's 6-3 majority blocks that injunction.

but not on another order, a remedial order that was issued on the 21st of May, which now Judge Murphy says is still binding, despite the Supreme Court's ruling. And that was an invitation from Justice Sotomayor in her dissent. I'm going to explain it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF on Michael Popak. Okay.

A couple of days ago, we reported that the Supreme Court 6-3 MAGA majority turned due process upside down and had blocked the injunction for Judge Murphy. He had issued an injunction, and there were about eight people that were being held at the Djibouti in South Sudan, or a Djibouti Air Force base for the United States, subject to his jurisdiction.

The judge found that his orders had been violated, his injunction had been violated, because people were sent to third-party countries, third countries, without proper notice, despite his injunction. He then issued a remedial order on the 21st of May, in which he raised the specter of contempt. He said the Trump administration may also be in contempt.

Then the Trump administration appeals just the injunction on the 18th, but doesn't address the May 21 remedial order about the court's power.

Supreme Court rules and in her dissent, which we covered, Justice Sotomayor says point blank, the remedial orders of Judge Murphy or the lower court have not been appealed and are not before this court. OK, nobody said anything about it. She circulated her dissent before the one paragraph came out on the emergency application. Six to three majority.

That was obviously an invitation to Judge Murphy, because on Monday, a couple of days after that ruling, he pulled everybody together and said, you know what's still binding? My May 21 remedial order, meaning you are not to deport any more people over due process because it's subject to my order while I get a handle on whether this administration is in contempt.

The Trump administration hates that. And so basically in the same 24-hour period that they first sue every judge in Maryland, every federal judge in Maryland is now on the receiving end of a Trump lawsuit because they don't like the automatic injunction that the Maryland courts, the federal courts are giving to people with writs of habeas corpus petitions.

to give them 48 hours to get before a federal judge before they're deported and deported away from federal jurisdiction. At the same time, they file through John Sauer, the Solicitor General under Donald Trump, his former appellate criminal lawyer, they file a motion for clarification with the United States Supreme Court in the DVD case.

And what they say to the court is, we have an unprecedented defiance by Judge Murphy. He got your order and now he's not abiding by it. He's saying that the remedial order is still in effect because it is.

And kudos to Judge Murphy and kudos to Justice Sotomayor for going carefully through all of this and realizing that there is inherent power and authority of a judge, independent from what the Supreme Court says, that they are the master of their domain, their domain being their courtroom, their caseload, their administration of justice. And if they're not blocked, if every order

that is at risk or is in dispute, is not appealed at the United States Supreme Court, it's still fair game for the judge to use his inherent authority to find contempt. Because even if his injunction was later blocked, it doesn't mean that the Trump administration hadn't violated it and wouldn't have been found in contempt. We just saw a similar thing play out in Judge Boasberg's courtroom.

who's the chief judge of the D.C. court, when his injunction in the JGG case up to the United States Supreme Court about those 200 poor souls who were loaded into a plane without due process and dumped off into El Salvador, over his injunction, over his block, his order to ground the planes...

That act, even if it's later, the injunction underlying it is later overturned by the Supreme Court, the act of defiance by the Trump administration is in violation of the court's orders and powers, and he must find contempt. And he found probable cause for criminal contempt in the Boesberg case. Same thing here with Murphy. Murphy is just Boesberg North.

And Sotomayor is backing him up, basically saying, take a look at the remedial order you issued because that's not up at the Supreme Court. Boom. He takes a look at the remedial order. I'm sure he thought of it on his own and pulled everybody together and said, okay.

It still stands. Nothing has changed by the Supreme Court decision. So John Sauer wants to run back, you know, go to the well again. Here we go. Let's see if we get the Supreme Court to clarify. Now, here's what happens. I may be very open with you on this podcast, but off the air, I really do value my privacy. And it's 2025. Are your blinds still from 2005? There is a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters and drapery. And it's called three day blinds.

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And then Sotomayor, Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson enter into their dissent written by Sotomayor. Now they don't have to accept. They run their own docket at the Supreme Court. They don't have to accept the motion for clarification. There's nothing to clarify. What's to clarify?

The clarification is the injunction is blocked. It doesn't mean everything else that happens below at the trial court level, including on issues that haven't been litigated, that haven't been briefed, are somehow going to also be blocked and stayed by the Supreme Court. The injunction is blocked.

But this is a different order about a different issue, about contempt and breaching and Donald Trump's administration violating federal court orders. We know that's happening. It's going on right now. It's being exposed during the confirmation hearing for Emile Bove, the number three lawyer in the Department of Justice, with a whistleblower who testifies that he was instructed to defy federal court orders, to lie to them, to not tell them the truth.

to tell them to go F themselves. That is verbatim. So of course Judge Murphy's going to say, nobody's going to tell me to F myself in my courtroom while I'm still wearing a black robe with a lifetime appointment. And no, I looked carefully. My order on the 21st was not blocked. So you must abide by it. I think they're going to lose on the clarification. I really do. I think they're going to allow the lower court to administer justice. And when there's another order appropriate for appeal,

or has been appealed with a proper record, they'll take it up then. But not on a motion for clarification. A very peculiar way to conduct business by the Department of Justice and Donald Trump. But the other reason they want to do it is because they want to set a precedent. Yeah? Because they've already got in the California, moving over to California, and the National Guard case...

They've already got briefing in with Judge Breyer in San Francisco, in which they argue that the entire case has been stayed by the Ninth Circuit's 3-0 decision about the takeover of the National Guard.

Whereas Judge Breyer thinks he still has jurisdiction, which he does, to continue to develop record evidence about things other than the temporary restraining order, including about a preliminary injunction, including about whether the Posse Comitatus Act has been violated by Donald Trump. So you see how these two things go together? Because

The Trump administration is arguing to Breyer the case is stayed by the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. And Breyer is basically pushing back and saying, I don't see where all of my work and I've been divested of jurisdiction. Same thing for Murphy. He hasn't been divested of jurisdiction about third country removal of people without notice just because they got a stay of one of his orders.

That's on Donald Trump. See, this is the weakness. There's a strength to the strategy that Trump is using, obviously, in bringing emergency applications to the Supreme Court without a proper record, without full briefing, without oral argument where a lot of these issues would be resolved, without full deliberation by the Supreme Court.

But, you know, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. You want to have a crappy, skeletal, short fuse appeal based on one narrow order? Well, then you don't get a full blown, full bang appeal, full merits appeal. And so you and then you can't supplement it or you shouldn't be allowed to supplement it with a motion for clarification.

I'm going to cover this. It's a fast-moving story, and it has a lot of domino, cascading impacts on other positions taken by the Trump administration, which I'll cover here on the Midas Touch Network, do about 14, 15 videos a week, and over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Come over there, hit the free subscribe button there as well, and I'll post these filings on Legal AF, the sub stack. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. ♪

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