Judges end Trump pick Alina Habba's tenure as New Jersey's top prosecutor
According to an order from New Jersey's district court, a panel of judges declined to permanently appoint Habba to be the state's US attorney, signaling a rebuke against the Trump administration.
Habba inflamed Democratic hostilities when she brought charges, later dropped, against the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, and the state representative LaMonica McIver after they visited a privately operated immigration detention center in Newark.
The federal judges did not offer any explanation for their decision. But the order, signed by Renee Marie Bumb, the chief federal judge for the district of New Jersey, appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor whom Habba had named as her first assistant US attorney, as her replacement.
The justice department accused the panel of judges of political motives for declining Habba's nomination, and, hours later, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Grace also had been removed.
'This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges – especially when they threaten the President's core Article II powers,' Bondi wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump's authority under the US constitution.
Grace has been with the US attorney's office since 2016 and most recently led its criminal division. The appointment was to take effect on Tuesday 22 July, or after the expiration of 120 days following Habba's interim appointment in March.
Habba, 41, had clashed with New Jersey's Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim. In a statement earlier this month, the senators said Habba had 'degraded the office and pursued frivolous and politically-motivated prosecutions'.
The senators said Habba 'does not meet the standard to serve the people of New Jersey', and pointed to the arrest of Baraka and her creation of an 'Election Integrity Task Force', which civil rights groups have criticized as an effort to purge some state voter rolls.
Habba had been criticized for having no prior prosecutorial experience and politicizing the role. She told a rightwing talkshow host shortly after being named to the post: 'We could turn New Jersey red. I think New Jersey is absolutely close to getting there, so hopefully while I'm there I can help that cause. And you know, I'm not a political person in that role, but I can tell you that the one thing I just want to do is make [New Jersey] safer.'
Habba's dismissal comes as Democrats in the US Senate recently ended the 'blue slip' tradition for circuit court nominees, but kept in place the practice for US attorneys and district court judges. The blue slip system gives a state's two senators, in this case Booker and Kim, a measure of approval. Without it, a nominee faces confirmation hearings.
That has allowed Emil Bove to advance as Trump's pick for the US court of appeals for the third circuit but allowed federal judges to knock Habba out of the running for New Jersey's US attorney spot because she had not been confirmed by the Senate judiciary committee.
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The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. It couldn't have done it without the west's help
What have we done? As the UN-backed monitor declares that 'the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip', this should have been the question ricocheting between the walls as Keir Starmer met Donald Trump this week. Israel's deliberate starvation of Gaza is, after all, a crime confessed to, designed and implemented in plain sight. Starmer has said the UK will recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel doesn't agree to a ceasefire and a two-state solution, but don't be beguiled: Palestinian national self-determination is an inalienable right, not a bargaining chip, and it's the most symbolic action he could take rather than, say, imposing sweeping sanctions and ending all arms sales. The hand-wringing of western politicians and media outlets will not feed Gaza's emaciated children, any more than it will absolve them of guilt. Israel's leaders have said, explicitly, repeatedly, from the very beginning, that they are deliberately starving Gaza's people. 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Later that year, that same administration sent a public letter detailing Israeli aid obstructions, but Tel Aviv correctly calculated this was political posturing during the presidential election, largely ignored the demands and suffered no consequences for doing so. Israel has perpetrated the biggest slaughter of aid workers in history, killing more than 400 by the spring. It waged a relentless war against Gaza's main humanitarian agency – Unrwa, the UN's Palestinian refugee agency – and banned it from the occupied territories last October. Its military killed police officers charged with escorting aid and preventing looting. It's not just the blocking of aid from entering. Israel's onslaught has left nearly all agricultural land unusable, as well as damaging 80% of cropland. Nearly all livestock and most plant life is dead. Gaza's port and fishing vehicles have been destroyed, and Palestinians defying Israel's ban on fishing face slaughter. 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As aid agencies have noted, the GHF is designed to coax a starved population to the south, so they can be confined in what the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described as a 'concentration camp', before being deported. Despite Israel's obvious, transparent, shameless guilt, its lies are indulged by western politicians and media outlets. On Monday, Donald Trump repeated that 'a lot of the food is stolen' by Hamas. This lie has been contradicted by Cindy McCain, director of the World Food Programme, and widow to the hawkishly pro-Israel late Republican senator John McCain. An internal US government analysis found no proof, and Israeli officials have briefed that their military reached the same conclusion. Perversely, it is criminal gangs backed by Israel – which Netanyahu's own former deputy noted are linked to Islamic State – that are stealing aid. The international criminal court's arrest warrants, issued eight months ago, centred on Israel's deliberate starvation for a reason: the evidence is overwhelming. Yet even if Gaza were suddenly flooded with aid, many Palestinians would die because their bodies have been irreversibly ravaged by hunger. And that is not even on the agenda. The 73 trucks allowed in on Monday were forced to take an unsafe route, and then looted. Our own prime minister has been promoting airdrops of aid. These are pinpricks, badly targeted and have killed Palestinians when they've fallen on their heads. All they really achieve is cover for Israel, to pretend it is doing something, deflecting from its deliberate mass starvation. But what else should we expect from Starmer, who backed Israel's right to impose a siege on Gaza at the beginning of the genocide, then tried to gaslight us into believing he hadn't? What have we done? If western elites had any shame, this question would be robbing them of sleep. And the answer would be straightforward. You facilitated the mass starvation of an entire people. You knew what was happening, because of a deluge of evidence for 21 months, and because the perpetrator – your friend – repeatedly boasted to the world about its crime. Alas, the architects of this abomination will not hold themselves to account. That will be left to history – and the courts. Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Reuters
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