(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . L.L. #17, May 7 [1] ['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Chitown Kev', 'Sabrina Haake', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine'] Date: 2026-05-07 [Preface:] This is Laudable Links, the quality of which varies with the availability of “goldilocks zone” articles that I, the curator, can recommend. There are usually three pieces, with discussion and context, that I feel are worth your time in reading. As ever, comments are the second most important thing to me (catharsis being first), authors being third. Group members are also highly desired. This morning, with apologies to Milton, we have some darkness visible: The Senate is trying to save Donald’s Ball Pit and Bouncy Castle from its illegality by adding $1,000,000,000 to the reconciliation bill. At NOTUS, we can read that Tod Blank said that a top priority for the Department of Justice will now be de-naturalization cases. It’s good to know that, when they dropped 25,000 criminal cases, they had something important to do. Judge Boasberg started a contempt case against the DHS. DHS appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and A MIRACLE occurred: it drew two Trump appointed judges, and they said that there was no contempt. The ACLU would like five judges, not three. On the sidewalk, 86th St. Even the reporters don’t understand the story of the allocations. I know that one DKos regular doesn’t have a high opinion of Robert Kuttner, but I try to judge the work rather than the person, and his “A Billion in Taxpayer Money for Trump’s Ballroom” at The American Prospect is well organized and clear. It is also, however, deficient in context. [Quote:|]Senate Republicans have added a billion dollars to a must-pass immigration bill for President Trump’s East Wing ballroom, which was supposed to be financed entirely with private donations. The billion is part of a $70 billion reconciliation package that finances the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats have blocked some of that funding to negotiate restraints on ICE abuses. [|End Quote] So why? The Republicans say that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is why. Obviously, that dinner was not held at the White House, and the correspondents, per charter, cannot hold their event at the White House. Further, as Mr. Kuttner points out, there have been ZERO White House security breaches/threats. Therefore, this is a billion dollars to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. There is a reason for the Senate cutting the throats of all its members up for re-election, and all the House Republicans, though. To understand that context, you could do yourself a signal service and read Eric Columbus and Molly Roberts’s “What Does the Correspondents Dinner Have to Do With Trump’s Ballroom Project?” at Lawfare, but that will take you quite a bit of time. Instead, you can trust me to give you the important bit. The National Trust has prevailed against the Ball Pit (ball room) project and stopped its construction BECAUSE IT WAS PRIVATELY FUNDED and because CONGRESS DID NOT APPROVE OF IT. Meanwhile, the Bouncy House (the security bunker under the ball pit) has not been blocked and has no stay on construction because IT CONSTITUTES NATIONAL SECURITY. Oddly, Donald has himself stopped the bouncy house because he really wants that ball pit. He wants it super bad. He wants it so much that he has ordered the Senate to shove a billion extra dollars into the reconciliation bill, just so there will be Congressional funding (greater, by a factor of 3, than the $300 million Donald raised from his corporate Superfriends) and a nod of Congressional approval. . . even though it won’t really be such. [Quote:|]If Trump wanted to jam his allies in Congress and hand Democrats a winning issue, he could not have done better than this one. Democrats plan to demand a separate vote on the billion dollars for the ballroom. [|End Quote] The problem with the Senate tricking Judge Leon is that Leon has already approved construction for the bunker, but not the Taj Mahal Casino on the Potomac, and yet [Quote:|]the language tries to pretend that the public money is only for security and not for the ballroom itself. They can’t have it both ways. As Judge Leon wrote, “National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.” [|End Quote] Let us make him eat cake. DHS, DOJ, DJT. . . what’s the diff? Tod the Blanche, as reported by Jose Paglieri (and I miss him from his days at The Daily Beast, when he was one of the few reliable authors), is now promising to strip citizenship from all those illegals who are legal. You know who they are! “Blanche Vows DOJ Will Prioritize Denaturalization Cases” is an honest headline about a dishonest man and an unAmerican practice. Listen to the goons when they’re talking to the goon squad. They won’t necessarily be more honest, but they will tell you what they think is a winning position. In this case, Blanche was arguing, without evidence, that “recent immigrants” had passed through the dozens of barriers and tests to become citizens as part of a fraud or conspiracy, and it was the duty of DOJ to fix that. Evidence? Evidence is not relevant. Charges are what matter. [Quote:|]“We are on track to surpass the number of denaturalization filings the Biden administration submitted in four years. We’re going to pass that, I think, in about a week,” he told a receptive audience of border-security agents and business contractors during a speech at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix. “This is another way that we’re able to deal with border security, is going after these folks who came into this country … and we’re saying, you cannot stay here. You have to go. We’re trying to protect the integrity of the naturalization process,” Blanche continued. [|End Quote] Is there, you ask, any evidence that “they” cannot stay, that the “integrity” of naturalization has been . . . injured? What, by the way, does “integrity” MEAN in conservative speech these days? Oh, and remember Pirro’s ridiculous parade of dropped charges after her maximalist charges? How about the bizarre litany of dropped charges in Minneapolis? Anyone remember Krispy gNoem’s charging people with terrorism and then dropping the case? It’s on orders from the top. When you’re knocked over, make sure your falling body doesn’t hit a federal agent, or its car. [Quote:|]the acting attorney general also said that prosecutors have been given explicit instructions to seek punishment for any physical resistance to the increasingly combative deportation raids seen nationwide [|End Quote] It’s time to stop saying that he’s doing all this to please Donald. No. This is Tod Blanche himself. It takes a black heart and a superfluity of bile to be so consistently dedicated to evil doing. The weighted dice that draw judges No, I know, the assignment of judges to cases is random. It was random that Cannon got Donald’s second case, and Middlebrooks got the “RICO-everyone” case. Still, the luck of the draw starts to resemble Duke men’s basketball’s NCAA seeding after a while. Colin Kalmbacher, at Law and Crime, writes about an effort to revive Judge Boasberg’s contempt case against the Department of Homeland Security in [title edited] “ACLU urges full court of appeals to revive Judge Boasberg’s ‘courageous’ contempt inquiry into deportation flights.” It isn’t easy to write about this topic. First, do you know about the contempt case? Do you know what occasioned it? Let’s go back to April 2025. DHS grabbed a whole bunch of men and simply flew them to CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that the United States seems to be renting. It is notorious as a “torture” prison. These men 1) had not been in court, 2) had not gotten to file a habeas corpus, 3) would, once in CECOT, literally never get out, since they were not charged with any crime and therefore had no “sentence” to serve. Their attorneys (for a few of them) filed habeas petitions, and Boasberg ordered DHS to 1) return the men it had sent so that their petitions could be heard, 2) DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SEND MORE. DHS put men on a plane. The judge heard about this and called a session at night and gave an emergency order. DHS flew them out anyway, saying that they never got the order. Oh, and they said, to order #1, they couldn’t bring the men back because. . . El Salvador. Boasberg initiated contempt. Trump began insulting Boasberg. Fox News began attacking him. Libs of TikTok began doxing him. Got it? [Quote:|] On April 16, 2025, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a jurist who got his start under George W. Bush and who was later promoted by Barack Obama, found probable cause that the government was in contempt. That contempt finding was in response to the admitted violation of a March 2025 court order directing the Trump administration to turn two planes around containing 238 Venezuelan immigrants who were bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798.[|End Quote] Note 2025. Now, almost exactly a year later (the courts don’t move quickly or grind very fine), the court of appeals stopped it: [Quote:|]On April 14, in a 2-1 ruling, the appellate court told Boasberg to back off. The opinion was penned and joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, respectively, who were appointed by Trump. In the minority was Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, an Obama appointee. [|End Quote] I don’t like the “X-appointee” labels, but this is the DC Court of appeals. It matters a hell of a lot to the presidents, because this is where federal government cases will go. And, for “Trump appointed,” the man hasn’t had that many years for the judges to be “seasoned” with experience. Even if we didn’t know who named them, though, Rao, especially, is known for a red cap. Childs, meanwhile, is generally a conservadem, as she has some rulings that are quite. . . uh. . . washed out wishy. Roll the dice and you get Rao, Walker (also a prize winner at the 4H fair), and Childs as balance? That’s lucky! [Quote:|]Now, led by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the detainees are imploring the full appeals court to take up the case. “The panel’s 2-1 ruling mandated that Chief Judge Boasberg end his criminal contempt inquiry into the brazen violation of his order not to remove Plaintiffs to El Salvador—a violation that resulted in Plaintiffs being subjected to months of abuse and torture at the notorious CECOT prison,” the reconsideration motion begins. [|End Quote] ACLU does not initiate a motion to reconsider if it doesn’t think it has a strong chance. It has a very strong chance, even if Judge Boasberg were not a former chief judge. The plaintiffs suffered irreparable harms, and the rationale offered by the government was no rationale at all. Big quote coming, because it seems like good pleading to me who has a bleeding heart and no bar card: [Quote:|] “The panel preemptively decided that the district court’s order was ambiguous and could not therefore support a criminal contempt finding, even though the government lawyers handling the case stated that they understood the order,” the motion goes on. To make matters worse, the panel’s ruling went even further afield by simultaneously finding that Boasberg could have easily passed the matter off for prosecution but could not conduct additional fact-finding of its own, the ACLU says. “But even if the district court were barred from seeking additional information (which it plainly was not), the panel’s principal holding that the order’s supposed ambiguity precludes criminal contempt now means that the district court is barred from even making a referral,” the motion continues. “The panel’s ruling has thus shielded Defendants from further inquiry into their actions, whether by a prosecutor or the district court.” [|End Quote] A bad ruling. ACLU won’t say that it was an ideological ruling, still less that it was one affected by the artillery barrage of “truths” coming from Donald, Bondo Pam, and all the folks at the restaurant where you have to show your ID at the door, but they sure make it seem like that sort of ruling. And the evil doers are told to “say fuck you” to federal courts. The appeals court stuffing project will protect them. [Conclusion:] A bit apocalyptic at the end, there, but “jeremiad” is a perfectly fine noun, after all. If they write better, I’ll scribble better. Y’all make the best of it, please. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/7/800034591/community/l-l-17-may-7/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/