A few weeks ago, a federal judge in Texas issued an injunction, blocking the Biden administration’s vaccine requirements for federal workers. As a practical matter, the move didn’t amount to much — 95 percent of the federal workforce has already complied with the policy, which was first announced in September — but it was nevertheless a highly dubious move from a district court.
The ruling came from Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee who was confirmed with zero Democratic votes.
This came about a month after a Trump-appointed judge ruled against the White House’s vaccine policy for federal contractors. A week earlier, two Trump-appointed judges, in separate cases, ruled against the administration’s vaccine requirements for health care workers.
The broader dynamic isn’t limited to vaccines. On his first day as president, Joe Biden restored an important climate cost estimate: Under the policy, when federal regulators create environmental rules for polluting industries, they need to include expected damage from greenhouse gas emissions.
On Friday, as the Associated Press reported, a federal judge blocked implementation of the policy.
U.S. District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general from energy producing states who said the administration’s action to raise the cost estimate of carbon emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production. The judge issued an injunction that bars the Biden administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
If you’re wondering whether Judge Cain is a Trump appointee, he is. The larger pattern is striking. People for the American Way’s Elliot Mincberg published a report last month, taking note of 15 cases from 2021 in which Trump-appointed judges “improperly delayed or stopped important and legal Biden initiatives.” Clearly, this year is shaping up to be no better. A few years ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told the Associated Press that it’s wrong to think about jurists through a partisan or presidential lens. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.” I have always wanted to believe this. Lately, that’s been awfully difficult.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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