President Trump provokes “crazed lunatic” Ana Reyes to issue an appealable order and demonstrate that she is bonkers.

We talked about Judge Ana Reyes last week. She is the rogue judge from Uruguay appointed to the bench by Joe Biden whose terminal case of TDS has induced her to go toe-to-toe with the Trump administration over the rehabilitation of a decrepit public golf course on federal land in the District of Columbia. When last heard from, she was bullying and abusing DOJ lawyers with unappealable orders in a case over which she lacks jurisdiction–for the same reason that the Supreme Court found busy-bodies lacked standing to challenge the White House East Wing ballroom project. Reyes will surely be reversed, but Judgment Day was hastened when DOJ’s #3 official Stanley Woodward filed a recusal motion and refused to be brow-beaten by her in a marathon courtroom tirade. Reyes went berserk.

She has now issued an actual injunction (instead of a contempt-trap oral order that the rogue judges in D.C. like to use), thereby allowing the DOJ to seek appellate review, and then issued a wacky 70-page opinion that let the world know just how obsessed she is with usurping executive branch functions that are none of her business.

Judge Reyes doesn’t seem to understand that President Trump’s social media posts on Truth Social are not the legal equivalent of executive orders or legal briefs submitted by the DOJ. They are often a combination of boastful campaign rhetoric, entertaining hyperbole, and light-hearted banter, like his trademark off-the-cuff rambling at his frequent political rallies. Maybe because she’s from Uruguay, Reyes doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.

So she began her 70-page opinion with this sentence: “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting President.” This is not a “gotcha”; it is a sophomoric, tone-deaf, foreign-born leftist activist looking for something to argue about. The D.C. Circuit is unlikely to conclude that federal courts should be spending their time obsessing over President Trump’s Truth Social feed, with odd references to a Dr. Seuss book, The Lorax.  Reyes apparently compares President Trump to the fictional character “the Once-ler,” described by Wikipedia as “a business magnate who causes environmental destruction.”

Reyes’s idiotic 70-page decision, which contains 75 footnotes—as if it is a scholarly law review article!—ends on this puerile note:

The Court earlier stated, “I am not the Lorax. I do not speak for the trees.” The Court still does not speak for the trees. It speaks only for the rule of law.

How portentous and pretentious! How adolescent! How narcissistic! How wasteful of federal taxpayer resources to devote such an absurd amount of time and resources in a silly, futile squabble with the executive branch over the rehabilitation of a public golf course—about which I am confident to speculate Judge Reyes has little or no relevant expertise! In a case in which she lacks jurisdiction due to a lack of standing. She is a poster child for TDS-induced judicial insurrection. She should be summarily reversed, recused, disciplined, and impeached.

How did commentators react to her latest escapade?

Democracy Forward, which is representing the DC Preservation League and the golfers, called the ruling a big win to protect the park from “further irreparable harm.” [WSJ]

Julie Kelly: “Her unhinged line of questioning…is so out of bounds for a federal judge that she needs either immediate removal from the bench or perhaps some meds.”

Mike Davis: “An emotional unstable leftist woman from Uruguay who Biden made a DC federal judge believes she (somehow) has the power to tell the duly-elected President (who happens to develop golf courses) how to handle tree maintenance at a rundown federal golf course.” And this: “A crazy leftwing woman from Uruguay who Biden made a judge illegally stopped the duly-elected President (who develops some of the best golf courses in the world) from performing tree maintenance to transform a run-down golf course into a world-class public course.”

Iowa SG Eric Wesson: “I’m concerned she may be missing the forest for the jurisprudential trees.” (That’s punny.)

And Julie Kelly again: “To no one’s surprise, DOJ is appealing Judge Ana Reyes’ halt to East Potomac Golf Links renovation.”

I predict that the Supreme Court will smack Reyes down, if the D.C. Circuit doesn’t do so first.

In other news….

Grand jury nullification in D.C.

There are several ways to subvert the rule of law: selective enforcement or non-enforcement of laws by the police; selective prosecution or non-prosecution of crimes by a Soros-type district attorney; judges not following the law, etc. In blue cities and states, another technique for subverting the rule of law is when grand juries (deciding whether to issue indictments) or petit juries (hearing civil or criminal cases) ignore the law and facts to ensure a result that comports with their own sense of fairness or desired political outcome. This is called jury nullification.

The District of Columbia has the worst electorate of any city in America. Which makes it perfectly suited to hamstring the application of laws against favored groups, and to convict innocent people charged with crimes. (Think of the J6 defendants, Steve Bannon, and Peter Navarro.) You may recall that a D.C. jury acquitted the federal government employee who was videoed hurling a Subway sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent. The assaulter was charged with a misdemeanor by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro because the grand jury refused to indict him for a felony assault. At least the jerk was fired from the DOJ, where he worked.

Grand jurors have a well-deserved reputation for doing what the prosecutor asks them to do. There is even a famous expression that a grand jury would “indict a ham sandwich.” For that reason, a grand jury’s refusal to indict, called a “no bill,” is almost unheard of for most career federal prosecutors. But that assumes a “normal” pool of grand jurors. In blue cities infected with The Resistance, different rules apply. In cities like New York, D.C., and Chicago, grand jurors and petit jurors bring their political prejudices into the courtroom.

It happened again. Cassidy Hutchinson, formerly and aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified falsely to Congress’s so-called January 6 committee (led by the notorious Liz Cheney) about President Trump’s actions and statements on January 6, including the refuted claim that the President tried to seize the steering wheel of The Beast. Cassidy Hutchison perjured herself.

When the DOJ brought the case before a grand jury in D.C., the grand jurors refused to issue an indictment. What do you expect from an electorate that voted against President Trump by a margin of 95% to 5%? This was not the fault of the prosecutors, but of the grand jurors. Hans Mahncke stated that “The system is totally dysfunctional and fundamentally unfair, whereby anyone who is not a Democrat has no chance of receiving a fair hearing, let alone justice, while Democrats themselves are completely shielded from accountability.”

On X, Skeptical Stoic pointed out that

For the last several years, left-wing activist groups have hosted information and training sessions for prospective jurors in DC. This is part of an organized effort to nullify the DC jury pool in order to give Democrats and their allies in DC de facto immunity for politically motivated crimes while subjecting anyone they suspect of being a political opponent to a “guilty until proven innocent” standard.

It’s a complete perversion and total inversion of what the justice system in this country is supposed to be, but Democrats care more about protecting Democrats and hurting Republicans than they care about the justice system, let alone the country.

No doubt Democrats and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) would be wailing like banshees on crystal meth if the situation were reversed.

 

Jury nullification is an insult to the rule of law. I have described it as “anarchy in a microcosm” and a “12-person mob.” If Congress was capable of doing its job, it would figure out a way to wrest control of the legal system in D.C. from the contaminated jury pool that is currently in charge.

Next up….

A federal judge in Dallas has lost her mind—and no-showed at a mandatory psych evaluation ordered by the Fifth Circuit.

Almost all of the unfit, rogue judges responsible for mischief on the federal bench are appointees of Biden, Obama, and Clinton, misbehaving for ideological reasons. Once in a while, a GWB appointee will let their TDS affect their judgment. The case I am going to discuss involves an appointee of Donald Trump (in Trump 1.0) named Ada Brown, in the Northern District of  Texas. Despite a normal-appearing background and career, Brown has been temporarily suspended from deciding cases based on a formal finding that she likely suffers a “mental condition that interferes with her ability to perform the responsibilities of her office.”

This is very unusual, but not unprecedented. A very respected 7^th Circuit judge, Richard Posner, appointed by President Reagan, had a similar episode which resulted in his abrupt retirement from the bench. To date, Judge Brown has refused to cooperate in an investigation of charges against her, and has failed to submit to a psychiatric examination, as directed.

What did Judge Brown do?  In the incident that generated the most news coverage, she insulted and harassed a lawyer in her courtroom, Ezra Young. According to Legal Insurrection, Brown, who has African-American and Native American ancestry, subjected Young (who represented a black female professor who filed suit after being denied tenure) “to a series of despicable racial insults during an April hearing in Dallas.” Young is Hispanic.  Legal Insurrection reports:

According to the hearing transcript obtained by Bloomberg Law, Brown, a black and Native American woman, said, “I think what’s happening here, quite candidly, is you are very intimidated for some reason, Mr. Young, with Black excellence, in light of your White mediocrity. Yeah. Right?” She added, “You should write that down. I mean, you — I’m — you look like a White man, right?”

Young politely informed her that he was not white, but Latino.

“Well, you are White-presenting; is that fair to say?” she asked.

“I’m fair-skinned, Your Honor, yes.”

Brown replied, “You’re the White savior, come to save all the stupid Black lawyers in Texas who need your help, from New York.”

In another exchange, Brown alleged that Young had engaged in “racial bullying” of black attorneys involved in the case.

Brown also said Young was acting like a “Chad,” which she explained was “the male version of a ‘Karen.’ It’s someone who calls the manager when they don’t get their way. They stomp their foot when the rules are supposed to apply to them, right?”

Young is a Columbia Law School graduate.

Jonathan Turley reports that

Judge Brown apparently had an axe to grind over an article that appeared in an earlier case involving a black professor. Brown referenced an article that quoted a brief filed by Young that referenced another law professor apparently comparing what happened in the tenure denial to a “lynching.”

She accused Young of making up the quote to “get a headline”: “And so when I read a headline — a sensationalized, very racialized headline that says, ‘it’s like I’ve been lynched,’ and it’s literally got no connection to this case, I have to ask you, Mr. Social Media, Main Character Chad, White Hero, Savior, Loves to Help Black People Be An Ally, where the lynching in this case came from?”

These bizarre statements also attracted the attention of Fox News, Josh Blackman at the Volokh Conspiracy, Bloomberg Law, and Reuters. Brown’s questionable conduct is not limited to the single court hearing in April. The Fifth Circuit Judicial Council cited ten separate examples of problematic behavior by Brown:

1. Failing and/or refusing to communicate with her chambers staff or otherwise manage her docket.
2. Engaging in demonstrably egregious and hostile treatment of others by making aberrant and inappropriate comments, including racial insults, toward [redacted] in a hearing conducted on [redacted].
3. Recusing from over 40 cases since June 1, 2026, at various stages of litigation, including after a bench trial and after conclusion of cases, either without explanation or for unusual reasons, e.g., concerns “about the constitutionality and ethics of these matters.”
4. Making unsubstantiated claims that orders are being entered in her cases or are being altered by others without her permission and/or with criminal intent, failing to provide evidence of such claims upon request, and requesting to have those claims investigated by the Texas Rangers.
5. Repeatedly making claims without any apparent justification or evidence that judges, attorneys, and court staff are discriminating and retaliating against her because of her race and/or gender.
6. Engaging in demonstrably egregious and hostile treatment of others by making racial insults to judges and court staff.
7. Sending copious and bizarre emails to court staff and judges, including emails in the middle of the night, and copying and/or blind copying others who have no reason to be copied on such emails.
8. Announcing her intent to resign and rescinding the same at least twice since June 30, 2026.
9. Refusing to return to work to “protest” the alleged failure of the Clerk’s Office to enter a letter of recusal on the docket of an MDL case that is no longer assigned to her.
10. Refusing to meet with Chief Judge Elrod and Chief Judge O’Connor to discuss these issues and her docket.

If, as it appears, Judge Brown has had some type of mental breakdown, she needs to be removed from the bench. Federal judges serve for life. It is therefore imperative that the President who nominates them and the Senate that confirms them carefully review their fitness and judicial temperament. Moreover, complaints of bizarre behavior must be promptly and firmly handled.

It appears that Judge Brown was of sound mind when appointed to the federal bench in 2019, but that something has tragically gone wrong. The Fifth Circuit, under the leadership of Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, has done an excellent job responding to this unfortunate situation.

Finally…

Tennessee Supreme Court ends the ABA’s monopoly over legal education.

I am on record as saying that Tennessee has one of the best state AGs, state supreme courts, and state bar associations in the country, and my assessment is borne out by the Tennessee Supreme Court’s recent decision (as reported by The College Fix) “to loosen the state’s reliance on the American Bar Association after years of treating it as the sole accreditor for law schools, making room for other accreditors to get involved. The decision replaces the requirement that future lawyers attend an ‘ABA-accredited law school’ with broader language mandating only a ‘law school accredited by an Approved Accreditor.’ Tennessee is now the fifth Republican state to open accreditation, following Alabama, Ohio, Florida, and Texas.”

This is a victory for competition, innovation, and practical legal education, and a blow to the image of the ABA, which has become a caricature of left-wing activism. In full disclosure, I submitted public comments in support of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision. The revised rules regarding eligibility to take the bar examination in Tennessee are as follows:

Sec. 2.02. Legal Education Degree Requirements. (a) As used in this Rule, “Approved Accreditor” is defined as an entity approved by the Tennessee Supreme Court to accredit or approve law schools. The Supreme Court shall promulgate a list of agencies or organizations authorized to accredit or approve law schools. The Board shall include a list of Approved Law School Accreditors in the Board Policies and Procedures and will post the list to the Board’s website.

Unburdened by the cartel-like guild requirements imposed by the ABA, law schools would be free to pursue measures that would reduce the cost of legal education, such as increased reliance on adjunct faculty rather than costly (and in many cases overpaid) full-time tenured faculty, increase competition, flexible curricula, and possibly shorten the course of study from the current three-year program, etc.

Getting rid of the ABA monopoly over law school accreditation will also reduce the amount of racial preferences in admissions and faculty hiring, reduce the current emphasis on political indoctrination, and improve the ability of law graduates to serve the legal needs of the Tennessee public. It will be interesting to see which alternative organizations emerge as “approved accreditors.”