When a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the Trump administration to deploy federalized National Guard troops in Portland, New York Times columnist David French hailed the decision as a model for the nation to emulate. Finally, he said, a judge had shown us the way; she “refused to play Trump’s game and instead held him accountable for his words.” Judge Karin Immergut, French concluded, had gotten it exactly right: “The opinion is a model of judicial clarity. Other federal courts should read it and absorb her reasoning.” French published that column on October 12.
Today, just over a week later, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Immergut’s TRO, describing an extensive list of analytical failures on the part of the district court judge. Start at pg. 23 in this document for the discussion of the lower court judge’s many legal errors:
Note that the 9th Circuit’s opinion also describes a radically different factual background in its earlier pages, thoroughly rejecting Immergut’s description of a largely peaceful protest that Trump bizarrely decided to treat as a series of violent acts. Footnote 10, pg. 24: “The district court also clearly erred in characterizing the events in September leading up to and preceding the federalization order.”
On pg. 30, the appeals court judges conclude that Immergut “turned the proper analysis on its head.”
David French, a lawyer who now works as a worse-than-useless opinion journalist, looks at Judge Karin Immergut’s order and sees a national model of clarity, precision, moral wisdom, and legal sophistication. An appellate court sees a shambles of lazy assumptions and bad law.
French: “The opinion is a model of judicial clarity.”
The 9th Circuit: “But the district court turned the proper analysis on its head.”
This man is the King Idiot. It’s not that he’s merely never right. Rather, you can take his description and his analysis and then assume, with great confidence, that reality is precisely the opposite of literally anything at all that he ever says.
Final outcome unclear, and oral argument is scheduled for later. But the TRO forbidding deployment is stayed. Headed out for a few hours. More later.
French is not a useful idiot, he's not even a useless idiot, he's just an idiot.
David French is the "Costanza Effect" in practice. Investors have the Cramer Effect, the rest of us follow the George Costanza Rule: just do the opposite.