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True
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The Justice Department Should Not Defend The Legal Incoherence That Is The Debt Ceiling
On Friday, May 19, the National Association of Government Employees filed an emergency motion in their lawsuit against President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. NAGE urged the Massachusetts District Court to issue a preliminary injunction holding that the debt ceiling violates the separation of powers and Presentment Clause set forth in Articles I and II of the U.S. Constitution.
Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser said: “Attorney General Merrick Garland must refuse to defend the unconstitutional legal incoherence that is the debt ceiling. The Justice Department should file papers supporting the National Association of Government Employees’ request, and should do so as soon as possible. There is no justification for the Biden administration to dither when an active lawsuit demands immediate response.”
“NAGE’s argument is sound, and indeed, has been all but endorsed by the President himself. Garland has no reason to defend the nonsense which is the debt ceiling, besides a vague sense of formality and tradition driven by elite political etiquette. The cost of prioritizing tradition for tradition's sake would be irreparable harm to the U.S. and global economies, caused by a first-ever U.S. default as soon as June 1—or else complete capitulation to the ultra-MAGA faction of the House Republican caucus that marionettes Kevin McCarthy.”
“While President Biden may be willing to keep channels open until the very last minute with nihilistic, bad-faith Republican lawmakers, the Justice Department’s obligation is to the Constitution, which is unequivocal: the president cannot pick and choose what congressionally appropriated obligations to meet, and the debt of the United States shall not be questioned. Garland may be constitutionally reluctant to seek the spotlight, but this crisis threatens the stability of the nation, and indeed, the global economy. He should not prioritize his own sense of formality over the language of the Constitution he swore to uphold.”
The Justice Department must file an answer to NAGE’s lawsuit by June 6. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has estimated that the nation may breach the debt ceiling on June 1.
The Revolving Door Project (RDP) scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.
The Gaza Tribunal's final statement calls for legal accountability, suspension of Israel from global groups, and activation of a veto-proof UN mechanism for international intervention to stop the genocide.
A civil society panel assembled in response to Israel's annihilation and starvation of Gaza delivered its final statement Sunday in Istanbul—detailing nine categories of crimes committed, warning that genocide continues, and calling on humanity to take action to hold the perpetrators legally and morally accountable.
Chaired by Richard Falk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and a professor emeritus at Princeton University in New Jersey, the Gaza Tribunal held four days of public hearings during which international jurists, experts, and witnesses offered evidence and testimonies of what they said are Israel's continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.
Israel "is perpetrating an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, within—and enabled by—a broader settler-colonial apartheid regime rooted in the supremacist ideology of Zionism," said Christine Chinkin, a University of Michigan law professor who chaired the tribunal's Jury of Conscience.
"The jury, guided by conscience and informed by international law, does not speak with the authority of states, but when law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal," she continued. "We believe that genocide must be named and documented and that impunity feeds continuing violence throughout the globe."
"Genocide in Gaza is the concern of all humanity," Chinkin added. "When states are silent civil society can and must speak out."
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The jury named—and condemned—Israel's crimes in Gaza, including:
Reprocide, or the intentional and systematic targeting of reproductive care through prevention of births, eliminating future lives, and the ability to reproduce safely;
Scholasticide, the "genocide of knowledge" via the destruction of educational institutions and infrastructure and killing of and forcibly displacing educators and students;
Attacks on journalists—well over 200 of whom have been killed since October 2023—in order to thwart genocide documentation;
Politicide—the targeted assassination and abduction of political and cultural leaders, representatives, activists, and the destruction of civic institutions.
Additionally, the jury "finds Western governments, particularly the United States, and others complicit in, in some cases colluding with, Israel’s commission of genocide through provision of diplomatic cover, weapons, weapon parts, intelligence, military assistance and training, and continuing economic relations," Chinkin said.
The panel called for "ending impunity and ensuring accountability" by using legal institutions such as the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—and the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza including murder and forced starvation.
The jury also urged UN member states to invoke the United for Peace resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 1950. The measure is designed to empower action when at least one of the five permanent Security Council members uses a veto to thwart functions mandated under the UN Charter.
The resolution—which has been implemented more than a dozen times—allows the UNGA to take actions ranging from rejecting Israel’s UN credentials to mandating an armed protection force for Gaza, if approved by two-thirds of UN member states.
The jury further recommended "resisting and dismantling oppressive structures" by "building a worldwide movement that weakens, isolates, and dismantles each source through coordinated political, legal, economic, academic, cultural, technological, and social action."
It also called for "comprehensive global confrontation" of Israel "in every sphere—political and diplomatic; legal and human rights; economic and commercial; media, cultural, intellectual, academic, and educational; industrial, technological, and scientific; arts, tourism, and sports."
"Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity," Chinkin concluded, adding that "neutrality is surrender to evil."
"I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground," said a former prosecutor who lives in a neighborhood that was tear-gassed.
A former Cook County prosecutor said he had collected a tear gas canister from his own front lawn in a residential Chicago neighborhood and submitted it to a law firm that is preparing a lawsuit over immigration officers' persistent use of tear gas against residents who object to their raids across the city—including in Old Irving Park this past weekend, where parents and children were getting ready for a Halloween parade when agents wreaked havoc on the neighborhood.
The Chicago Tribune reported that former prosecutor Brian Kolp had been watching news coverage Saturday morning of a temporary restraining order handed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis earlier this month barring federal agents from using riot control weapons like tear gas against protesters who do not pose an immediate harm to officers' safety, when he realized federal agents where on his street in Old Irving Park.
"I could see two fully uniformed agents in military fatigues literally tackling a guy right here in my front lawn," Kolp toldCBS News.
The man the agents detained, Luis Villegas, had been working at a house in the neighborhood, and his brother told reporters he was an undocumented immigrant who came to the US with his family at the age of four.
Neighbors ran out of their houses and filmed and heckled the agents, Block Club Chicagoreported, with some shouting, "Get off of him!" Another appeared to call one of the officers a "fucking Nazi."
The outlet reported that agents got out of their vehicles moments later, "put on their gas masks, and attacked at least two different people."
A person on a rapid response team that warns locals when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are in the area told Block Club Chicago that a 67-year-old woman was "knocked to the ground" by masked officers. She and a 70-year-old man were detained, and Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed they were "arrested for assaulting and impeding a federal officer."
McLaughlin also claimed Villegas was arrested for a previous assault charge, but provided no evidence of his criminal background.
In nearby Avondale, Chicago Tribune reporter Laura N. Rodríguez Presa said another woman was pushed to the ground by an ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent when she approached their vehicle during another anti-immigration operation.
"This appears to be the new normal in Chicago," said Rodríguez Presa.
A very disturbing video from today’s ICE/CBP operations in Avondale.
An officer pushes a woman to the ground, people get angry and throw -what’s seems to be a rock- towards the moving unmarked vehicle.
In Old Irving Park, the "new normal" for residents on Saturday included federal agents deploying tear gas as parents and costumed children were leaving their homes on their way to a neighborhood Halloween parade.
Resident James Hotchkiss told Block Club Chicago that he was leaving his house with his wife and children at 9:45am for the parade when he heard whistles ringing out in the neighborhood—a sound Chicagoans have come to recognize as a warning that ICE is nearby.
“At that point, I saw a man running towards me followed by two to three officers chasing after him. They tackled him onto a neighbor’s front yard," he said.
About 10 minutes later, Hotchkiss saw smoke in the air.
“I took my glasses off because my eyes were burning,” he said. “I saw someone pour water on a gas canister that appeared to be on fire.”
Heather Cherone, a senior reporter at WTTW, said the attack on Old Irving Park marked the "third straight day that federal agents have deployed tear gas against Chicagoans and the seventh time in 22 days," despite the court order.
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Kolp toldFox 32 that he "didn't see anybody with a weapon" that would have justified the agents' use of force.
"So you had folks who were literally out on the street taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened," he said. "I didn't see anybody make physical contact with these agents. I didn't see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground."
The agents left the neighborhood after about 30 minutes, and the Halloween parade proceeded—but with many families opting to stay home.
Kolp toldCBS News he retrieved a tear gas canister from his yard.
"I knew that piece of evidence would be critical for the judge to understand what the facts are," he said.
Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino is due in court on Tuesday, Fox 32reported, to answer questions about agents' continued use of tear gas against residentsin violation of Ellis' order.
"I was pretty upset to be honest with you," Kolp told the outlet. "I am an attorney. I used to work with and in law enforcement, and watching this happen in my front yard was just not something that I ever thought was gonna come to my front door. But you know, here we are."
A former Democratic senator once known for a purported "independent streak" now says she is working "hand in glove" with the Trump administration to force communities to allow the construction of energy-devouring artificial intelligence data centers.
As reported by YourValley.Net, former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) recently attended a planning and zoning commission meeting in the city of Chandler, Arizona, in which she warned local officials that a massive data center would be built in their community whether they wanted it or not.
According to YourValley.Net, Sinema was at the meeting to advocate for plans created by New York-based developer Active Infrastructure to construct a massive 420,000-square foot data center in the city.
A video of the meeting posted on X by 12News reporter Brahm Resnik shows Sinema telling local officials that if they did not act to approve the data center, then the Trump administration would simply impose it on them without seeking their input.
"The AI action plan, set out by the Trump administration, says very clearly that we must continue to proliferate AI and AI data centers throughout the country," she said. "So federal preemption is coming. Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built."
She then added that "when federal preemption comes, we'll no longer have that privilege, it will just occur, and it will occur in the manner in which they want it."
Former US Sen. Kyrsten Sinema lobbies for data center developer at Chandler AZ Plan Commission. Says she's working "hand in glove" w Trump Admin & warns city to embrace DCs or face federal intervention. City Council vote on Sinema's DC scheduled for Nov. 13. pic.twitter.com/KulHg594gj — Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) October 24, 2025
The construction of AI data centers has provoked outrage throughout the US, as local residents have complained about the data centers consuming massive amounts of resources—increasing monthly electricity bills and, in some cases, disrupting local water supplies.
Mike Jacobs, a senior energy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, last month released an analysis estimating that data centers had added billions of dollars to Americans’ electric bills across seven different states in recent years. In Virginia alone, for instance, Jacobs found that household electric bills had subsidized data center transmission costs to the tune of $1.9 billion in 2024.
Some progressive critics were quick to denounce Sinema lobbying for AI data centers, as it confirmed the view they held during her Senate career that she shilled for corporate interests.
"[I] knew Sinema would show up in some super-scummy corporate role," remarked journalist Nathan Newman in a post on Bluesky. "But being handmaiden to the AI tech lords in strong-arming local communities to accept AI data centers—or face the wrath of the Trump administration—is about as low as it goes."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) argued that Sinema's comments at the meeting show why "we need a lifetime ban on members of Congress lobbying."
Ian Carrillo, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma, expressed horror at the way major tech companies are deploying people such as Sinema to bully communities into accepting their plans.
"The AI bubble can't pop soon enough," he wrote. "These data centers are rolled out in the most anti-democratic ways, involving NDAs, shadow companies and, according to Sinema, federal preemption."
Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson condemned the former senator for "openly threatening localities."
Sinema's message to Chandler residents, said Robinson, was "Approve resource-sucking AI data centers in your communities, or I will work with the Trump administration to inflict data centers on you without consent, regardless of the harm that occurs
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim, meanwhile, simply labeled Sinema a "cartoon villain."
