Under Trump, Stock Market Up, Justice Index Down

      The Trump presidency has marked its 100th day with the stock markets up, but the justice index sharply down. The markets may have fallen victim to premature exuberance over the cloudy prospects for tax breaks for the well-to-do and regulatory relief for business and industry. But justice advocates are rightly troubled by all the steps the administration has already taken and seems intent on pursuing to set back the cause of equal rights and social justice both at home and abroad.
      A word first about the Trump stock market bubble. The S&P index closed on Friday [April 28] up 5 percent from its setting on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. Among post-World War II presidents, that gives Trump bragging rights over all but two: Kennedy and Bush41, who saw the market rise 9 percent in 1961 and almost 8 percent in 1989 respectively. The market fell 5.5 percent in Bush43's first 100 days, according to data from CNBC; it rose 2.8 percent in Obama's first 100 days and then another 18.7 percent over the next six months as Obama's policies helped lift the country from the Great Recession.
      The current stock market gains mean very little for the supposedly forgotten white working-class voters who gave Trump the margin for his Electoral College victory in a few battleground states and who depend on wages and salaries to earn a living. The fragmentary tax plan released by the White House on Wednesday [April 26] confirms the hopes of Trump's better-heeled supporters for lower tax bills for the rich and for corporations and dashes any hopes for significant tax breaks for middle- and lower-income taxpayers.
      To date, Trump has done little for the economically stressed middle-class workers he promised during his campaign to help, apart from photo-op announcements of supposedly saving factory jobs. And in a telling policy move on Trump's first full day in office the  Department of Housing and Urban Development reversed an Obama administration decision that would have lowered mortgage insurance premiums on loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. FHA-insured loans are popular among first-time homebuyers and those with poor credit; they stood to save hundreds of dollars a year under the policy quietly jettisoned by Trump's HUD.
      On issues more directly related to law and justice, the administration has been anything but quiet in instituting policies or signaling future moves to set back criminal justice, LGBT rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, and human rights abroad. The setbacks for justice policies come as no surprise given Trump's selection of the conservative Alabama senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general to head what, it must be remembered, is called the Department of Justice.
      Sessions has echoed the president's inaugural address warning about the supposed "carnage" in American cities, inciting public support for punitive anti-crime policies even with the crime rate at historically low levels. In perhaps the most distressing and least justifiable of his policy moves, Sessions has scaled back the Justice Department's oversight of local police departments. Sessions called the kinds of investigations that brought court-monitored, agreed-upon reforms to such troubled cities as Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., as part of a war on police. He directed a review of the existing consent decrees in nearly two dozen cities and stalled work on future agreements.
      As attorney general, Sessions has also echoed Trump in unsubstantiated warnings about voter fraud, thus attempting to shore up the dubious rationales for stricter voter ID laws even as federal court challenges proceed. In the highest-profile of such cases, the department under Sessions switched its previous position that Texas was guilty of intentional racial discrimination in enacting its strict voter ID law in 2011. Private plaintiffs fortunately are still pressing the claim, which could result in reinstituting preclearance requirements for any Texas voting law changes.
      Sessions also played a decisive role in reversing another Obama administration policy: the Education Department's directive to local school districts to allow transgender pupils to use restrooms and locker facilities corresponding to their gender identity. Reportedly, Sessions had to prevail on a reluctant Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to reverse the Obama administration policy guidance broadly interpreting the sex discrimination law known as Title IX to encompass gender identity. The move caused the Supreme Court to back away from a ruling in a transgender rights case, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., by sending the case back to a federal appeals court to take account of the new Trump administration policy.
      The Justice Department was also tasked with defending two of Trump's most legally dubious moves. So far, federal courts have rejected Trump's first and second "travel ban" executive orders that amounted to thinly disguised Muslim bans as Trump had called for in his campaign. A federal judge in San Francisco last week also rejected the executive order Trump issued in his first week threatening to cut off federal funds to so-called "sanctuary cities" that resist being commandeered into enforcing federal immigration law.
      Trump's most concrete legal accomplishment, of course, has been his appointment of the committed conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In 13 oral arguments over the past two weeks, Gorsuch gave court watchers no reason to doubt his future alignment with the court's conservatives in pro-law enforcement positions in criminal cases and pro-business stances in regulatory and civil justice cases. Even without recorded votes, Gorsuch evidently saw no need to tighten Supreme Court review of death penalty procedures as the justices allowed to go on an unseemly execution spree over the past two weeks.
      Far from concerned about these issues, Trump signaled his confidence in administration policies and U.S. standing in the world by proclaiming May 1 to be Loyalty Day. "The United States stands as the world's leader in upholding the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice," Trump declared. However true or not in years past, that claim rings hollow indeed as his administration moves past the 100-day milestone used to judge previous presidents.