Yes. And You Can Too.

This past weekend a federal district court in Massachusetts issued a nationwide injunction ordering Elon Musk and his team of young tech supremacists to stop accessing payment and other systems at the Department of Treasury, and further ordered Musk’s team to destroy any and all https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/nyregion/attorneys-general-trump-musk-suit.html

When I posted the news on social media, I was struck by how many readers responded with one of three responses: 1) well, it’s too late they’ve already downloaded all of our information; 2) yeah, but who’s going to make them comply; they’ll just ignore it or 3) even if they defy the court’s order and are held in contempt, who will arrest them? And won’t Trump just pardon them?

To be honest, each of these concerns is valid. But the frequency and tone of these responses suggested to me that something more than cynicism was at work. Certainly, people should push back against those who might suggest that the courts alone are the “answer” to this crisis moment. Many of us remember how many “experts” suppressed legitimate alarm during Trump’s first time by encouraging us to “just wait for Robert Mueller’s report.” I am a lawyer and so I believe in the power of law as a tool to fight against injustice. But as a civil rights lawyer, I also know that law alone is insufficient.