FEDERAL COURTS’ TRUMP OBAMA DOUBLE STANDARDS

April 20, 2025

In 2010, President Obama placed a 16-year-old American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, on a kill list, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime. Anwar al-Awlaki allegedly had joined jihadists in Yemen. The ACLU was retained by his father on his behalf and sued Obama in federal court, seeking to restrain the government from killing an American citizen on the grounds of due process. U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, dismissed the suit.

Yes, this is the same federal judge who ordered HHS to restore pages they removed from their websites last month to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology and extremism,” stating that the decision to pull them down could be detrimental to public health.

U.S. District Judge John Bates said in his written opinion that al-Awlaki’s father does not have the authority to sue on his son’s behalf, and he also addressed Obama’s authority to act.

…this Court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion — that there are circumstances in which the Executive’s unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is “constitutionally committed to the political branches” and judicially unreviewable. But this case squarely presents such a circumstance.

Judge Bates delivered the ACLU a huge defeat on The political question doctrine, which was argued by the Obama Administration.

Federal Courts have created a constitutional mechanism, the political question doctrine, that forbids them from reviewing cases that turn on “policy choices and value determinations” committed to the executive branch or Congress. 

When the Court decides an issue is a political question, it determines another branch, rather than the federal courts should act in interpreting the constitutional provision, and that the federal courts should refrain from acting.

Judge Bates determined that Anwar al-Aulaqi’s citizenship and claims of constitutional due process violations did not preclude the application of the political question doctrine.

The Obama administration proceeded to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan with a U.S. military drone strike in Yemen. A third American, Abdulrahman al- Awlaki , was killed in a separate strike later that month in 2012.

President Trump designated MS-13 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and ordered their removal from the U.S. under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which grants the president the power to detain and deport natives or citizens of “enemy” nations without the usual processes.

By the way, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act was written by the framers of the U.S. Constitution and signed into law by none other than President John Adams. Thus, to claim such a law is unconstitutional now when applied to MS-13 criminal illegal alien invaders is the height of judicial arrogance and abuse. The courts seem to believe they are above the law and are clearly playing politics.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction yesterday at midnight against the Trump administration, prohibiting the removal of any more MS-13 criminal illegal alien invaders without due process. Ironically they did so without providing the Trump DOJ due process whatsoever.

To sum up the federal courts ‘ position, Obama had the power to kill Americans overseas without any due process under the political question doctrine, but Trump cannot remove MS-13 criminal illegal alien invaders without due process.