March 22, 2025
The center of infection
By Bruce Majors
Not much is remarked yet on the federal judges trying to legislate from the bench in denying Donald Trump’s executive orders and immigration policies is how a number of them all live within walking (or at least biking) distance of each other. James Boasberg, who tried to order the Trump administration to bring back planes of violent illegal alien gang members being flown to El Salvador’s prisons, lives in “Chevy Chase, D.C.,” the posh D.C. neighborhood bordering the town of Chevy Chase, Maryland, where Boasberg’s Yale Law classmate Justice Brett Kavanaugh resides.
Judge Theodore Chuang, who believes the Trump administrations defunding USAID and laying off its staff is “unconstitutional” lives in another town bordering Chevy Chase, D.C. -- Bethesda, Maryland. The distance from Boasberg’s home on Huntington Street NW in D.C. to Chuang’s on Sebago Road in Bethesda is four miles, a less than ten-minute drive.
One might be concerned about how many of the judicial decisions being made are by judges who are essentially all from the same small geographic area and insular community. You could be even more concerned if you realize the community they are part of is perhaps the only one that has something to lose from DOGE, since D.C. and its wealthy suburbs all float on federal tax dollars taken from the rest of the country. There are endless examples of this, though one of the most obvious is the federal gas tax, a fifth of which goes to subsidize the subways of six cities, including the Metro system that services Washington, D.C. and Bethesda. Even though the people paying the gas taxes all around the country have never used a subway in their life.
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