Trump Cabinet secretaries conspired to violate Constitution, judge says

“The Cabinet secretaries and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” U.S. District Judge William Young declared.

A federal judge Thursday decried what he said were “breathtaking” constitutional violations by senior Trump administration officials and called the president an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to “toe the line absolutely.”

In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief, U.S. District Judge William Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech that would seek to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.

On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms. “Talking straight here,” he said. “The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”

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