The Trump administration notched another victory this week when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington granted a motion to dismiss a case brought by five organizations to stop the cancellation of more than 360 grant awards by the Justice Department. However, in reaching this relatively straightforward conclusion, Judge Mehta opted to follow a pattern set by other judges in adding his own personal commentary on the wisdom of the policy change.
Judge Mehta easily found that he lacked jurisdiction over such questions. However, he then vented his own personal views on the policy:
“Defendants’ rescinding of these awards is shameful. It is likely to harm communities and individuals vulnerable to crime and violence. But displeasure and sympathy are not enough in a court of law.”
Actually, neither the court’s displeasure nor sympathy should be part of the decision of a court of law. With all due respect to Judge Mehta, some of us find it shameful that judges are using these opinions to express their political viewpoints.
I previously wrote about this pattern of extrajudicial commentary, particularly among the judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who previously presided over Trump’s election interference case, was criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time and, when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go.
Later, Chutkan decided to use the bench to amplify her own views of the pardons and Jan. 6. Like Judge Mehta, she conceded that she could not block the pardons but used the cases to express her personal disagreements with President Trump and his policies. She proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
Judge Mehta has also been criticized for conflicted rulings in Trump cases and a bizarre (and ultimately abandoned) effort to banish January 6th defendants from the Capitol.
I fail to see how being assigned this case gives a judge license to hold forth on their own views of the merits of these grants or the implications of their suspension. He is tasked with deciding the legal questions in the case, which he did so correctly.
The sitting president tried to overthrow the Constitution and the judges are the problem.
No! Many left-leaning judges are trying to seize control of the executive branch and, in doing so, bypass the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court makes that clear every time Trump wins. Each ruling is a reminder that the judiciary is not meant to govern the executive, but to keep it within lawful bounds.
Nonsense!
Name one.
You can check the Supreme Court wins by Trump: no clear losses
There are so many crazy decisions made by crazy leftists judges, that the cases are seen on an emergency basis pending a Supreme Court decision. Here are a few.
Trump v. CASA, Inc. June 27 2025
Noem v. National TPS Alliance Oct 3 2025
Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition Sept 26 2025
Trump v. Slaughter Sept 22 2025
New Hampshire / Noem / Perdomo (immigration stops) Sept 8 2025
Department of Health & NIH grants case mid-2025
USAID Funding Freeze case Feb 2025
Federal Employee Reinstatement case Apr 2025
tRump v Slaughter sep 2025 overturns a precent set in 1935. In other words, radicalism on the part of the Supremes bent on establishing a unitary prez, another name for a dictator.
“I can do anything I want. I’m the President”, said Donald Trump.
David, you say judges aren’t interfering with the rightful actions of the Executive Branch. Yet I sent you a list of cases that reached the Court on an emergency basis, clear proof they had to step in. You ignore that and complain about a case that hasn’t even been heard, as if your personal disagreement decides what’s valid. You sound offended that the Supreme Court took up a case with many facets.
You call Trump a dictator, but you’re the one refusing to respect the Constitution and the law. That makes you the fascist here, the kind that only your voice needs to be heard.
Why is it that all the South Asian politicians (judges, representatives, etc) end to be liberal progressives? is this a result of our education system?
Democrats like to appoint lawyers with ties to other countries as Federal judges. Some are even foreign-born.
In China, they have Chinese. In Japan, they have Japanese. In Arabia, they have Arabians. In East Timor, they have East Timorans. In Argentina, they have Argentinians.
In America, they can’t have Americans.
In Europe, they can’t have Europeans.
Who put this —- out and who bought this —-?
Answer:
Abraham Lincoln.
Nope… American hating libs.
My taxes pay this judge’s salary and for his microphone. Since I’m helping to pay for your microphone, judge, perhaps you’ll give me your microphone to express my opinion?
👏👏👏
*. Once again I’d like to ask when writing about a case, please give the title of the case. Identify the parties as John Doe v. DOJ.
It’s difficult for ordinary people to look up District court cases. This was five non-profits v. DOJ? These are grants being cut of 1-2 million dollars various organizations collectively approx 850 million dollars? Congress passed a Bill deleting such grants? Will the Haitian cultural center in Springfield, Ohio lose funding?
Mehta was shaming congress in what is irrelevant language to the case from the bench?
It’s been dismissed.
OT . That was a bad flood in Texas. They’re in our thoughts.
*. ^^^ Apparently the DOJ said it’s a run if the mill contract and filed in the wrong court. The contracts are cut and money redirected to LE and other in place programs. The grants were given to private parties. Source: NY Times.
Macron attended quite a shindig at King Charles digs in other news. The UK appears to be making all the right moves in virtue.
Macron addressed Parliament one topic was Ukraine. No specifics given. Source: NY Times. Yes, EU, do take care of that war yourselves. Putin isn’t virtue signaling.
I think it’s time you start requiring names Jonathan. I think it would cull a lot of this idiocy as far as comment
“Peter Schweizer: Feds Have Had Epstein Client List Since 2019”
“Whatever the truth may be about Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide or “client list,” he was engaged in the business of human trafficking and that leaves a paper trail. As Peter Schweizer noted on the most recent episode of The Drill Down podcast, investment bank JP Morgan Chase turned over the Epstein records it had, worth over 1 billion dollars, to the federal government in 2019. Why haven’t those records been released?”
– Breitbart
The FEDS have it? OMG. These guys are capable of downloading porn onto my computer or phone . Do you not think them capable of manipulating the data of such a file? They addeth to and subtracteth from as they see fit which makes the whole file corrupt and worthless.
Yes, but it’s dirty laundry.
The young ladies were hostesses on the island.
A note: a pedophile abuses pre-pubescent children. The hostesses were not pre-pubescent. None the less transactional s$x is frowned upon.
He transported them and was prosecuted. The similarity of Sean Combs can’t be overlooked and Maxwell is doing 18 years. Combs should have been prosecuted for assault and battery and not much else. Disgusting person certainly but that’s irrelevant.
Cultural enrichment. Importing rocket scientists to America without vetting. How did he get this job, anyway?
Notice it’s always the left-wing judges, not the conservative judges, that are inappropriately spouting off with their gratuitous political screeds. It speaks to which side has insufferable arrogance that it foists on the rest of us.
That was so well said –
“cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror.” She sounds like some of our trolls. Maybe she is one.
how dare she denigrate San Francisco in that way!
“With all due respect to Judge Mehta…”
Ummm…
All due respect in this instance is none at all.
Judge Mehta is remarkably similar to Judge Boasberg – who everybody wants to forget, long before his recent Circuit Court rulings to hamstring Trump – was in charge of the FISA courts where Boasberg allowed Obama’s Attorney Generals and FBI Directors to repeatedly perjure themselves to his courts while using the felonious “Trump-Russia Dossier” to obtain illegal spy warrants.
Spy warrants that they used to eliminate the civil rights of THOUSANDS of normal Americans by felony color of law, in order to hopefully take out Trump to fix the election for Clinton.
Judge Boasberg did not summon a single one of those felons from the Obama/Biden DoJ back into his court to sentence them even just for contempt of court.
Judge Mehta – also sitting as a judge on those FISA courts – also allowed that to be done.
If you think Democrat lawyers involved in some aspect of politics, whether journalism, political campaign advocacy, bureaucratic or elected office are dangerous – look at what those Democrat lawyers do when they put on the black robes that confers on them the powers of being Judicial Kings, who the Executive and Legislative Branch most bend the knee in supplication to.
Perhaps judges who add extraneous political commentary to opinions should be known as “dictacrats”. 🙂
…or simply dicks.