The Biden judge who threw a wrench in President Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate ideological spending from the federal budget turns out to be something of an ideologue herself.
The White House Office of Management and Budget
ordered a pause on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants and loans on Tuesday to afford the Trump administration time to “review agency programs and determine the best uses of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the President’s priorities.”
Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth’s corresponding
memo to department and agency heads underscored that whereas federal spending “should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” funds are being squandered advancing “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies.”
The White House’s attempt to “ensure that Federal funds are used to support hardworking American families”
evidently did not sit well with the National Council of Nonprofits, the liberal small business group Main Street Alliance, and the activist group Services and Advocacy for Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Elders, which together filed a lawsuit, or with U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan, who obliged the plaintiffs’ desire for a temporary pause in the spending freeze until Feb. 3.
AliKhan,
whose December 2023 confirmation required a tiebreaking vote from Kamala Harris, has a track record of not only of being overruled by higher courts but of making extreme arguments, particularly against members of faith groups she apparently doesn’t like.
Months ahead of AliKhan’s confirmation, the First Liberty Institute and various other conservative groups highlighted her “long record of advocacy against religious freedom” in a
letter to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
They noted, for instance, that AliKhan
asked the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to strike down the ministerial exemption, which ensures that churches are free to conduct their internal affairs and choose their own ministers without government interference, unlike in communist China. All nine justices on the high court — including then-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Sonia Sotomayor — deemed AliKhan’s position “untenable” and “hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.”
‘Her arguments were “without a basis in text or precedent.”‘
In the pandemic-era case
Capitol Hill Baptist Church v. Bowser concerning D.C.’s denial of a church’s application to return to in-person worship, AliKhan reportedly argued on behalf of the district that masked and socially distanced Christians meeting outdoors posed a greater threat of exacerbating the pandemic than the mass leftist protests the city had permitted.
AliKhan elected not to bring in a medical expert to reinforce her claims but instead appealed to the insights of a supposed “doctor” who actually turned out to be Christopher Rodriguez, an academic with a specialty in political science. Rodriguez proved more than willing to furnish the leftist with unscientific insights; however, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did not buy what he and AliKhan were selling and
ruled in the church’s favor.
AliKhan, the
daughter of Pakistani immigrants, apparently also defended the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue’s denial of a property tax exemption for a Sikh religious organization. A court determined in Jaswant Sawhney Irrevocable Trust, Inc. v. District of Columbia that AliKhan’s arguments ran afoul of the First Amendment.
Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel for the First Liberty Institute,
noted in a 2023 op-ed that the court steamrolled AliKhan’s legal analysis, noting that her arguments were “without a basis in text or precedent” and that she had made a “quantum logical leap.”
Besides working to erode religious freedom in America, AliKhan has also had a prior run-in with Trump.
While still serving as the District of Columbia’s solicitor general, AliKhan
argued before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 that the president had operated his Trump International Hotel in D.C. in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause and requested a declaration that Trump had broken the law.
Then-Fourth Circuit Judge Dennis Shedd apparently picked up on AliKhan’s desire to put Trump in a lose-lose situation and to potentially expose him to greater consequence. Politico
reported at the time that Shedd asked the future Biden judge what she was really trying to get out of the lawsuit beyond a declaration that Trump was breaking the law.
Shedd
asked AliKhan, “Do you think that will be a basis for a high crime or misdemeanor or impeachment?”
The judge also asked the leftist, “I think you even want him fired from ‘The Apprentice,’ don’t you?”
In response to Shedd’s second question, AliKhan said, “I don’t think so.”
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