A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.
A federal judge chopped down Trump’s election-order power grab while his anti-government overhaul hit another wall, and the day’s court calendar made the White House look more like a defendant than a governing operation.
June 13, 2025, was one of those days when Trump-world’s biggest promises ran headfirst into basic constitutional plumbing. A federal judge blocked his executive order overhauling elections, and the broader effort to force changes through federal fiat kept drawing judicial resistance. The result was a day that undercut the administration’s swagger and reminded everyone that yelling “commonsense” at a court is not the same thing as winning one.
The through line here is simple: Trump kept trying to govern by command, and the courts kept answering with no. That makes for a lousy edition if you’re in the business of spectacle, but a very good one if you’re in the business of reality.
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5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked additional parts of President Donald Trump’s March 25 election executive order, including documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements and sections of the ballot-receipt framework. The ruling followed an earlier April decision that had already halted the proof-of-citizenship requirement, leaving other pieces of the order under separate legal attack.
A federal judge on June 13 blocked additional parts of President Trump’s election executive order, including provisions on proof of citizenship, mailed ballots received after Election Day, and related funding conditions. It was the second court setback for the order.