Trump judge

NO MERRI

see claRENCE clerks

SEE RAO NEOMI Mass deport 6 26

end judge shopping? 4 24?

see Leo (Teneo, mizelle)

see fed soc

see aileen cannon maralago

see doughty Landry RAGA

SEE MCCONNELL STACK PACK

SEE FULTON 2

3 22 maybe redumbdent, see ct pack stack

this could be running list of trump judges not that necessarily use bad legal judgement but whose decisions cause harm in the world

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fox-->

By Nate Raymond

Nov 5 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump is moving to nominate a Republican member of the Texas Supreme Court who voters ousted from office ‌in Tuesday's election to become a life-tenured federal judge, according to US Senate ‌records made public on Thursday.

Trump has not announced any such nomination. But the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee has received paperwork to begin considering outgoing Texas Supreme Court Justice James Sullivan to serve as a federal judge in Austin.

His nomination to a seat on the US District Court for the Western District of Texas will be taken up by the Senate during the lame-duck session in ‌the final weeks before Democrats take ⁠control of the chamber in January.

The White House and Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Republicans are pushing to confirm nearly ⁠two dozen pending judicial nominees and add to 56 confirmed so far during Trump's second term before they hand over control of the Senate to Democrats.

Trump made 234 judicial appointments in his first term, including three Supreme Court justices, helping shift the federal judiciary's ideological balance to the ‌right.

Over Democrats' objections, Republican US Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee's outgoing chair, scheduled judicial nomination hearings in consecutive weeks starting November 10, departing from the panel's typical practice of holding them every other week.

Sullivan, 45, was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court in January 2025 to fill a vacancy on the state's top court by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, ‌who lost his bid for reelection on Tuesday to Democrat Gina Hinojosa.

Democrats in the election won all four seats up for a vote on the state's nine-member high court, shrinking the Republican majority on the ‌Texas Supreme Court to 5-4.

Sullivan's campaign website touted him as "bold," "relentless," and "conservative." He lost Tuesday's election to Chari Kelly, a Democrat, and in a Senate questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sullivan noted his candidacy to retain his seat had been "unsuccessful."

Such questionnaires are submitted ‌to the committee by the US Department of Justice, and the Trump administration at times has submitted them before nominations have been officially announced.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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10 26 2 OF 3 tj, ~ ca BALLOT FUCKERY?

President Donald Trump has long made it clear that he does not get along with judges, from fuming at Supreme Court justices he appointed who vote against him to outright defying judicial decisions. Yet a Trump/judge split occurred on Tuesday that was remarkable even by Trump's standards — namely, a judge appointed by Trump quitting simply because he could not handle Trump's workload.

"A former immigration judge appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term revealed he left his 25-year government career because the demands of the president’s second administration made it impossible for him to ensure immigrants received due process," reported Mediaite's Kathryn Wilkens on Tuesday.

She added, "David Cheng, formerly an assistant chief immigration judge in Newark, New Jersey, spoke to Law.com about his decision to resign in July 2025 after spending eight years on the bench." Quoting Cheng as telling Law.com that "in 2025, with the new administration, the demands and what they were asking for were just sort of in conflict with why I dedicated my life to public service. It got to a point where I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ So I had to step away.”

Wilkens continued, "Cheng, who was appointed by Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017, previously spent 15 years as a government immigration attorney, including at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He explained that while immigration courts had long struggled with enormous backlogs, the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration compounded the problem. According to Cheng, judges were urged to move through an overwhelming number of hearings quickly, leaving little time to consider each case — a demand he felt compromised his responsibility to ensure due process."

Cheng complained, “If you had 100 cases in the morning and you dedicated two minutes per case, you know, that’s 200 minutes. That’s — rough math — about three and a half hours. And you were expected to do that in about two hours. It came to where you weren’t doing what you were supposed to do to make sure that everybody has due process.”

Trump has often expressed rage when judges do not do his bidding. For instance, he was reportedly livid in June when the Supreme Court did not rule as he wished on the issue of his ability to suppress mail-in ballots.

“He is completely livid over the mail-in ballot ruling,” CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said at the time. “And of course, part of this is about the justices who decided to rule against him in this case. Just a reminder — this was the Republican National Committee challenging a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots that came in after Election Day to still be counted.”

Holmes added, “if you look at the justices who voted against Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, one of them sticks out in particular, and that is Amy Coney Barrett — whom President Trump himself appointed to the bench. Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated. We've reported multiple times that behind closed doors he has slammed Amy Coney Barrett, saying that she has not stepped up and has not done basically what he put her in place to do.”

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AN 10 26 OMG 2X

Newsweek reports all four active U.S. district judges in Middle Tennessee have recused themselves from a lawsuit brought by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn against former special counsel Jack Smith over the collection of her phone records. This includes two judges that Trump himself appointed.

Blackburn filed the lawsuit on September 30 over Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of that inquiry, Newsweek reports investigators “obtained phone metadata linked to Blackburn and several other lawmakers.”

“Through his Arctic Frost witch hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the President of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation's history," said Blackburn. "This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation's justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people."

This issue goes back to Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that Smith was not a legal special counsel because she claimed he was not approved by the U.S. Senate. Until Smith, no special counsels were required to be approved by the U.S. Senate.

Blackburn claims that obtaining the records violated her constitutional rights, even though Smith said the records did not include call contents and that his office consulted the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section before issuing the subpoenas. Her lawsuit alleges violations of the Speech or Debate Clause, First Amendment and Fourth Amendment, and also challenges the legality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.

But now, Newsweek reports, an order filed October 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee reveals that no judge is willing to take up Blackburn’s argument.

“All District Judges of the Middle District of Tennessee have recused in this matter.”

“The order, signed by Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr., said a judge from outside the district will now be designated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the case will then be reassigned,” reports Newsweek. “The October 5 order does not give a reason for the recusals, and it does not say that any judge has a specific conflict of interest or bias in connection with the litigation. Two of the judges were appointed by President Donald Trump, while one was appointed by Bill Clinton and another by Barack Obama.”

Blackwell’s complaint points out that Smith and others who worked on the investigation subpoenaed toll records associated with a cellphone she used for legislative purposes. The lawsuit said those records revealed who Blackburn communicated with and the times and duration of the communications. But Blackburn herself does not allege that investigators intercepted the contents of her calls.

Blackburn is currently running for the governor's mansion in her state.

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AM 10 26 NOM

On Wednesday morning during Senate Judiciary confirmation hearings, a judge nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Donald Trump had her disqualification explained on no uncertain terms: her clear “lack of independence.” This is according to HuffPost Senior Politics Reporter Jennifer Bendery, who posted from within the hearing, “Right on time, another Trump court pick – Anna St. John, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit – will only say Biden was ‘certified’ president in 2020.”

This is in reference to a common tactic that has been used by a wide range of Trump nominees hoping to avoid the president’s ire when asked about the 2020 election during confirmation. A number of Democratic senators have taken to regularly asking nominees questions regarding who won the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 insurrection as a test of their unswerving loyalty to Trump, and routinely, nominees refuse to admit that former President Joe Biden won the election, saying only that he was “certified” the winner.

According to Bendery, St. John was also asked by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) whether the Capitol was attacked on January 6, 2021. The nominee struggled to respond, saying, “I want to be very careful with my language.”

“‘You are... continuing to adopt the president's distorted and inaccurate illusion’ about J6 and the 2020 election, Blumenthal scolded St. John, who sat silently,” posted Bendery. “‘It indicates a lack of independence,’ he says. ‘That lack of independence is disqualifying for you to be a judge.’”

Bendery notes that St. John is currently a U.S. District Judge, which entered into the hearing when Blumenthal asserted, "You have a lifetime appointment. Trump can't do anything to you. You have no reason to fear his vaunted vindictiveness against anyone who would defy his illusion about January 6." According to Bendery, he proceeded to rip into her "rehearsed and regurgitated" responses.

This comes shortly after a group of former federal prosecutors who were involved with cases against J6 rioters held a press event in which they begged Senators to stop accepting Trump’s J6-sympathetic nominees.

“Please stop poisoning our courts by confirming appointees who refuse to admit basic historical truths,” pleaded former assistant U.S. attorney Sean Murphy. “This is not a problem of perspective or political persuasion. It is a fundamental question of competence.” He’s part of a group of 12 former prosecutors who sent a letter to senators raising red flags about putting election deniers on the court, writing that the nominees’ “refusal to contradict the President’s lies… raises significant questions about whether, once confirmed, a nominee could act independently and free from political interference from the president that nominated them.”

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AN 7 26

Judge drops hammer on Trump admin: ‘You’re violating my order!’

President Donald Trump has lost again at another appeals court over the mass detention policy he's pushed out over the past year.

MS NOW producer Kyle Cheney reported that the 9th Circuit rejected U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) detention policy. It's the fifth straight loss at an appellate court. Cheney remarked that the district is the crucial one that covers California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington.

Politico reported Thursday that the decision is "the most significant rejection yet." Lower courts will now be bound by the ruling in states where there are thousands of detainees.

The ruling came down 2-1, and the court decided that he misconstrued immigration laws from decades ago that set the rules for the modern deportation system.

“The government’s change in policy has resulted in detained aliens filing thousands of habeas petitions in federal courts across the country, seeking bond hearings and possible release from detention,” wrote Trump appointee Judge Daniel Bress in the majority decision. “The implication of the government’s position is that Congress in 1996 made a major change to the immigration laws by subjecting millions of unadmitted aliens present in the United States to mandatory detention, but that this change then went unnoticed and unheeded, with the Executive Branch for the next three decades … We accordingly do not think that Congress in 1996 made such a large-scale change to our established system of immigration detention in the way that the government now contends.”

Anyone who has been in the U.S. for years and has established families can now only be detained after a bond hearing, which requires convincing an immigration judge that they can live safely in their own communities while the process unfolds.

Of the five courts that have ruled this way so far, Politico cited, are the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, the New York-based 2nd Circuit, the Colorado-based 10th Circuit and the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit, explained the report. Only two courts, the 5th and the 8th Circuit, have ruled in Trump's favor. There are court battles in four other circuits forthcoming.

Meanwhile, there have been a whopping 460 federal judges who have ruled against the administration on more than 10,000 cases involving the detention policies. This compares with 54 judges who have supported the ruling in about 1,100 cases, calculated Politico.

Trump's mandatory detention policy has faced unprecedented judicial resistance across the federal court system. Federal judges have overwhelmingly rejected the administration's interpretation of 1996 immigration law, with 460 judges ruling against the policy in more than 10,000 cases compared to only 54 judges supporting it in about 1,100 cases. The 9th Circuit ruling is particularly significant because it covers California, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington—regions with substantial immigrant populations.

The decision marks Trump's fifth consecutive loss at the appellate level. Only two circuits, the 5th and 8th, have sided with the administration. Legal experts argue Trump misread congressional intent, claiming Congress never intended to mandate detention for all undocumented immigrants regardless of ties to U.S. communities, creating a constitutional conflict between executive power and due process rights.

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an 7 26

Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.

From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.

Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.

ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.

“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.

“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”

In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.

“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”

Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.

In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.

“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”

Former federal Judge John E. Jones, a George W. Bush appointee

Federal judges rarely grant interviews, and none of the judges who criticized the Justice Department in their orders granted interviews to ProPublica.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said its attorneys are “dedicated public servants who represent the United States with integrity, in accordance with their ethical obligations and the law.”

“The Department stands firmly behind the professionalism and good faith of its attorneys,” said spokesperson Kiersten Pels. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal judges have found that the government filed statements generated by artificial intelligence that referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored facts and filed declarations with inaccurate dates, the ProPublica review shows.

In one case, the government included documentation claiming a detainee had been convicted of marijuana possession in 2009. That detainee, the judge noted, citing what she called the government’s persistent “sloppiness,” would have been 4 years old.

“This Court will no longer blindly accept statements of fact from [the U.S. government] unless they are made under oath by an individual with personal knowledge,” Judge Christine O’Hearn, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in New Jersey while reviewing a writ of habeas corpus petition filed by a man who claimed he was unlawfully imprisoned by immigration officers. O’Hearn accused the government of defying her orders when, instead of releasing the man, Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred him to a different facility in New York.

In Minnesota, the state’s top political leaders had publicly clashed with the administration following the violent ICE raids that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Then the administration filed a flurry of subpoenas against them.

Last month, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, slammed the government’s actions and “spurious claims,” saying the presumption of regularity was being abused.

“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the grand-jury process,” the judge wrote.

“Breakdown” of a Presumption

The presumption of regularity creates a high bar for those suing the government or defending themselves against it in criminal cases. They often must provide evidence that the government willfully violated a policy or otherwise deviated from its charge — that is, did something irregular — to overcome the standard.

It’s a shield the government wields often, with little notice, and one that is almost always successful. But overcoming that presumption has become increasingly common under Trump’s second term, according to court watchers.

About half of the cases ProPublica identified as questioning the presumption come from districts, including D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where by proximity and jurisdiction many of Trump’s actions are challenged and often heard by Democratic-nominated judges. The Southern District of New York, which has issued repeated rebukes of Trump administration actions, and the Northern District of California, another Democratic stronghold, are other hotbeds of judicial scrutiny.

Last September, D.C. District Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui accused the administration of working around the federal grand jury process, getting an indictment from a state court after prosecutors had failed to get one in his court, which he called “unseemly,” if not “unlawful.” He fired off one of the earliest signs that the presumption itself could come into question.

“This only deepens the growing mistrust of the actions of prosecutors,” the judge wrote. “That is a sentiment that was once unthinkable, but the irregular is now the regular.” While the case was largely managed by assistant U.S. attorney Caelainn Carney, according to court transcripts, Faruqui was aiming his frustration at her bosses, including senior prosecutor Jonathan R. Hornok, and the leadership at DOJ. Neither attorney responded to requests for comment.

Pels, the DOJ spokesperson, told ProPublica that Faruqui “was wrong on the law” and noted that after the government appealed to the district’s chief judge, his order was overruled. “Judge Faruqui has a long-standing documented pattern of editorializing from the bench beyond the scope of the cases before him,” Pels added.

But in recent months, skepticism about the presumption has also come from judges appointed by Republicans, such as McElroy, or in GOP strongholds.

In Indiana, Trump-appointed federal Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered the release of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a lawful U.S. resident, from ICE custody in March. Sarsour’s lawyers argued the government had targeted him to suppress his First Amendment right to free speech. The DOJ invoked the presumption of regularity and argued his arrest was part of an anti-terrorism dragnet, which the judge threw out.

In the Southern District of Ohio, Judge Michael R. Barrett, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered ICE to release a detainee after concluding the presumption had been overcome because the government hadn’t presented a reasonable argument that the man was a flight risk.

News outlets, including CNN, have documented federal judges’ ire with Trump’s DOJ, and some of the cases under question have been well-publicized, such as the government’s illegal deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. In that case, Judge Paula Xinis, a President Barack Obama appointee, criticized the government, saying, “You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you’ve destroyed it.”

Many of the rulings challenged one of Trump’s hallmark efforts: immigration enforcement and deportations.

“The presumption of regularity and integrity previously and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United States Attorney’s Office has been undeniably eroded in this jurisdiction and across the country,” O’Hearn wrote in February, noting that the federal government had repeatedly violated court orders in her district and others related to immigration operations.

In another immigration detention case, this one in Washington state, Biden-appointed Judge Lauren King said, “[t]he ‘presumption of regularity’ is dislodged here by the numerous factual errors in Respondents’ filings and by their conflicting representations.”

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge from California, said what’s happening in the courts feels more like a “political conflict” than the normal ebb and flow of the justice system.

“It’s really one branch that is really sort of questioning the legitimacy of the other one,” Fogel said. “I think the judges are trying to stand up for the legitimacy of their branch.”

Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has been tracking cases in which federal judges have admonished Trump’s prosecutors, including those involving the presumption.

“We’re witnessing a breakdown in the ways in which any administration ordinarily carries out its responsibilities, through the Justice Department in particular,” said Ryan Goodman, Just Security’s co-editor-in-chief.

Erosion of Trust, Ethics Inquiries

The erosion of trust from the federal bench comes as Trump has profoundly shifted priorities at the DOJ to align with his political platform: ending civil rights and diversity programs, deporting immigrants and stripping away environmental protections.

Those who deal with DOJ lawyers have noticed the difference in court.

Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has faced off on environmental issues with the DOJ many times. Although they may disagree, he said, he always expected his opponents to be “fair and above board.”

That dynamic is gone, he said.

“I would call it a transformation of the role of the Justice Department,” he said. “There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”

The result, Bernard said, is that “the government will lose more cases as a result of the way the Justice Department is behaving.”

“There are many different judges in different jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling, and that’s an extraordinary thing.”

Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council

Meanwhile, groups such as his are benefitting from the government brain drain. “We hired 10 litigating attorneys last year,” he said. Of those, eight came from the DOJ.

Judges aren’t just losing faith in the DOJ. Some are pushing to sanction Justice Department lawyers.

This month, Miami federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was an improper exercise in self-enrichment, citing the president’s lawyers for a series of misstatements in the case.

The Obama appointee referred the lawyer who brought the president’s case against the IRS, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She also forwarded her ruling to disciplinary officials in New York, who had earlier received an ethics complaint about acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

A DOJ spokesperson called the Blanche case “nothing more than a politically motivated bar complaint, filed by partisan activists who disagree with this Administration’s policies.” Brito did not respond to a request for comment.

In Rhode Island, McElroy referred DOJ lawyers to a review board for possible discipline for their handling of the hospital investigation.

“As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,” McElroy wrote. “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”

Over the weekend, conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a claim that has MAGA in full meltdown mode. His assertion: that the First Amendment exists, and that the nation’s founders were not motivated by the Christian nationalism so often pushed by the far-right of today.

Gorsuch was speaking with PBS when he made a statement that has horrified MAGA, saying, “We were founded, a lot of our colonies, for our religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way. And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion. It was about those ideas,” he noted, referring to America’s founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “And those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all.”

Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in 2017, Gorsuch’s words flew in the face of assertions by the Christian nationalists of MAGA, like Vice President JD Vance, who has claimed, “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the revolution to the Civil War and beyond.” Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, added, “Across that history, our country’s major debates have always centered on how we could best as a people please God.”

But according to the Hill, “Gorsuch took a different tact, pointing out that Charles Carroll, who was also Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence alongside members of other Christian faiths. He also explained that Amish and Quakers settled in the then-British colonies.”

As Gorsuch put it, “We have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion, everybody has a freedom of religion, everybody has the freedom of speech, we are all equal under law,” adding, “Now, you can not agree with those ideas, fair enough. Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind.”

MAGA, however, is decidedly not uniting behind Gorsuch’s words.

“Wow — that is astounding historical ignorance!” posted one outraged Christian nationalist. “I wonder what ‘Creator’ he thinks they meant in the Declaration of Independence?”

“Our country is failing in every way possible because traitors to our founding and our nations principles are overthrowing it,” declared another MAGA adherent. “Now Gorsuch just said that our nation was not founded as a Christian nation. Everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. The communists and overlords are extremely powerful and there is no one to keep us on track with our constitution and with American principles. We also have a two tier justice system and our elections are stolen so we are ruled by anti Americans. Sad times, and to think ‘our side’ is in charge.”

“Good job GOP ... Three picks, three sellouts, cowards and gibbering clowns,” wrote another, referring to Gorsuch as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, who have drawn MAGA’s ire recently for taking occasional stances against Trump’s agenda. “Screw originalism, the whole institution is rotten and should be ignored.”

“Really[?] So in dollar bill inscription IN GOD WE TRUST is totally Islamic and Muslim,” claimed yet another. “What ... plain imbecile human[!]”

The slogan “In God We Trust” was not added to U.S. currency by the country’s founders. It began appearing on select coins nearly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence, and was not added to paper currency like the dollar bill until 1955.

AN 7 26

One of President Donald Trump’s closest allies, MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, got slapped down in a court case by a judge Trump himself appointed.

“After Mike Lindell was held in civil contempt and hit with a $500-per-day fine for 103 days for refusing to pay sanctions he's owed Smartmatic for years, a federal judge has given the MyPillow CEO exactly one month to pay an ‘extra penalty’ for his defiance,” reported Law and Crime’s Matt Naham on Tuesday. Smartmatic is a voting machine company that Lindell falsely accused of engaging in fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which Trump continues to insist he won despite losing more than 99 percent of his court cases making that allegation.

“In late June, Smartmatic asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to clarify whether the voting machine conspiracy theorist would pay some of the contempt penalty to the company or if the sum was to be paid directly to the court,” Naham added. “The judge, a Donald Trump appointee, answered that question on Monday by entering a judgment in favor of Smartmatic and giving Lindell until Aug. 21 to ‘pay the total daily contempt penalty of $51,500’ to the ‘Registry of the Court.’

In his decision, Nichols pointed out that “when a sanction is designed to coerce a recalcitrant party to comply, the sanction should be payable to the court, rather than to the opposing party. [T]he Court imposed the daily civil contempt penalty to coerce compliance, not to compensate Smartmatic[.]"

Nichols began fining Lindell in April for saying he could not pay the $56,369 in sanctions even though he had spent $187,037.87 in campaign funds from his 2026 run for Minnesota governor solely to buy copies of his own book "What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO" and give them away.

Lindell’s gubernatorial campaign has also been beset with controversy. Despite being endorsed by Trump, Lindell was recently found to be registered to vote in Texas, indicating he may not be able to cast a ballot in his own campaign. What’s more, Lindell repeatedly tries to characterize himself as an outsider despite his close ties to Trump, such as when he said this to Trump’s former adviser and ongoing friend Steve Bannon.

“They’re having a big GOP endorsement where they’re having a debate and I’m not allowed to come,” Lindell told Bannon on his podcast War Room in May. “They’ve shut me out.”

Lindell continued, “The establishment doesn’t want me, Stephen. The Minnesota media—you wouldn’t even know I’m running.”

He later concluded, “I believe I am the only one that can win, and I believe I’m the only one with the solutions to our problems.”

AN 7 26?

Trump has suffered a number of legal defeats at the hands of judges, from having jurists reject his attempts to target political opponents to deeming his tariffs illegal. Now he has endured another setback at the courts, this time over his immigration policies and at the hands of a judge he appointed.

"JUST IN: A federal judge in Minnesota — Trump appointed chief judge Eric Tostrud — has rejected the administration's effort to force Minnesota to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law," reported Politico's Kyle Cheney on Monday.

Trump's Justice Department sued the State of Minnesota, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hennepin County and the county's sheriff by arguing that their implementation of "sanctuary" laws and policies that restrict local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Chief Judge Eric Tostrud, who was appointed by Trump himself, dismissed the government entire case.

Tostrud found that the government could not prove that it should be able to preempt the Minnesota Constitution because its fundamental demands were too speculative; their accusation of a service-of-process defect against Minneapolis was characterized as a harmless delay; and every other claim was dismissed on their merits. Perhaps most importantly, Tostrud concluded that the government's argument violated the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which has an anti-commandeering doctrine that protects state sovereignty.

Tostrud’s decision cited ample legal precedent to reach its conclusion. On one occasion, it pointed out that “the Federal Government may not command the States' officers... to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program." On another occasion it noted that “[w]hen questions of federalism are involved, we must distinguish between expectations and requirements."

It also rejected Trump’s argument that the local governments have an obligation to help federal officials, quoting precedent that “[r]efusing to help is not the same as impeding” and that “[a]n ICE detainer is a 'request,' not an order, for another law enforcement agency [to] hold a particular alien."

If precedent continues, Trump will likely be furious at Tostrud for ruling against him, as he tends to believe that judges he appointed are supposed to do his bidding.

“He is completely livid over the mail-in ballot ruling,” senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said in June when the Supreme Court ruled against Trump on the issue of mail-in voting. “And of course, part of this is about the justices who decided to rule against him in this case. Just a reminder — this was the Republican National Committee challenging a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots that came in after Election Day to still be counted.”

Holmes added that “if you look at the justices who voted against Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, one of them sticks out in particular, and that is Amy Coney Barrett — whom President Trump himself appointed to the bench. Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated. We've reported multiple times that behind closed doors he has slammed Amy Coney Barrett, saying that she has not stepped up and has not done basically what he put her in place to do.”

AN PHOENIX FLA 7 26

“‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’”

That’s how federal judge Mark Walker began his 2022 injunction blocking enforcement of Ron DeSantis’ “Stop Woke Act” in Florida institutions of higher education.

In case you don’t recognize the quotation, it’s from George Orwell’s “1984:” You know, the novel where the Ministry of Truth rewrites history and forbids free enquiry.

Certain words are banned; wrong thinking is punished. Even hearing about disfavored ideas is considered an attack on decency and order.

As defendant in the case, the State of Florida argued (apparently with a straight face) university professors have the right to free speech, sure, but only if the state approves of that speech.

The law forbade teaching anything that explores racial or gender injustice.

You weren’t allowed to say, given how we still struggle to overcome discrimination against minorities, women, and the disabled, that maybe diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped a lot of people; you must embrace color-blindness in all things (because we all know race doesn’t matter in America!); yet, woe betide you if you ever made a white person feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”

Like many of us teaching in the state university system, the judge was unimpressed.

DeSantis and the legal team from his Ministry of Truth appealed up the food chain to the 11th Circuit, and what do you know?

They lost again.

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’

The majority opinion, by a Trump appointee, is unsparing.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

She called the Stop Woke law “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse.”

Naturally, the governor pitched a little hissy fit, taking to social media to say, “State universities are funded by taxpayers and directed by elected officials and their appointees. The state has both a right and a responsibility to ensure instruction at these universities is consistent with the underlying mission and to exclude indoctrination and ideological agendas.”

He called the decision “judicial overreach.”

Let’s talk about gubernatorial overreach. Or, to put it another way, what is this guy’s problem with education?

Is he really that frightened of ideas?

If he and his education appointees are so convinced their positions — slavery had an upside, gender is 100% biological, capitalism is divinely ordained, a woman’s highest destiny is to be a mother, vaccines are unnecessary, climate change isn’t real — are valid, surely they’d welcome testing them with historical records, expert reports, and empirical evidence.

Facts, even.

Reading books by and about, say, gay people, teaching the history of Stonewall, or examining central Supreme Court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges, do not mean straight people will somehow become gay, any more than studying Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will necessarily inspire you to assassinate any official you think has gotten too big for his britches.

Gender studies will not destroy heterosexuality; it’s simply a way to talk about the ways people understand who they are, how they present themselves, how other people see them.

Snowflakes

Universities are supposed to be where you encounter people who aren’t like you, unfamiliar, maybe upsetting, points of view, tricky topics, and ideas your parents don’t approve of.

Intellectual freedom means we should be able to discuss almost anything.

Yet the DeSantis administration act like snowflakes, hypersensitive, unwilling to contemplate anything outside their very white, very Christian, pathetically nationalist, bubble.

DeSantis is especially nervous America’s racial history, trying to outlaw “The 1619 Project,” a brilliant collection of writings about how the arrival of the first slaves on the Virginia shore has informed and shaped our country, shutting down or crippling African American Studies programs.

I guess white people are so used to considering themselves the “real” Americans who had all the good ideas, invented all the good stuff, and “built this country,” the reality that Africa is as central to our identity as Europe is scary.

The governor and his crew seem especially freaked out by the possibility students might encounter Critical Race Theory. Listening to them, you’d think CRT is to blame for everything from high gas prices to the common cold.

CRT is pretty simple: Race is socially constructed (not biological) and racism is not merely a product of individual bias (though that’s part of it) but embedded in our legal, educational, medical, and financial systems.

Say a white person and a Black person commit the same crime. It would make sense if they got the same sentence, right?

But in most cases the Black person will get a longer sentence.

‘The perfect villain’

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank, has repeatedly shown structural racism (conscious or not) in the medical profession means doctors and nurses misdiagnose Black, Latino, and members of other ethnic communities far more often than they do whites, and, unlike with white patients, tend to dismiss their pain.

Infant mortality among people of color is at least twice as high than it is for whites.

There’s nothing sinister or anti-American in acknowledging, as Justice Thurgood Marshall said, the original Constitution was “defective from the start,” given that it upheld slaveholders’ rights in their human property and protected the slave trade.

Slavery was at the heart of our republic since its beginning.

It still reverberates in our culture.

There’s nothing anti-white in pointing this out. The Founders installed in the Constitution ways to amend it, fix social problems, even change American society.

The country is an ongoing project: We’re still striving for that “more perfect union,” and acknowledging the blindingly obvious ways in which our deals don’t match up with our reality is not a heinous assault on patriotism.

CRT was developed by legal scholars, and has long been part of law school curricula. Nobody much noticed it until 2021, when a right-wing activist called Christopher Rufo kicked off a national moral panic.

You might remember Rufo from the 2024 presidential campaign, amplifying J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitians in Ohio eating cats and dogs.

Before that, Rufo had made a name for himself as a warrior against anything he saw as “woke,” especially in higher education.

DeSantis appointed Rufo to New College’s Board of Trustees (he’s since left) to help destroy what once was an admired, creative, and tolerant liberal arts school, labeling any teaching he didn’t like “Critical Race Theory.”

CRT, he said, is “the perfect villain.”

Army of lefties

Having tried to banish CRT along with sociology, the unpleasant parts of American history, the novels of Toni Morrison, and any science that might reveal things are more complicated than they’d like, DeSantis, the various mediocrities running Florida’s Department of Education, and fellow travelers such as Moms for Liberty, have convinced themselves universities are hotbeds of “Marxist indoctrination.”

Apparently, professors — especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences — are not merely “woke,” we’re a bunch of commies, determined to brainwash the Youth of Florida into hollering “Workers of the World Unite!” — assured they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Or something like that.

Alas, all my colleagues and I must be really lousy at indoctrination. I don’t know anybody who’s been successful in producing even one committed Marxist.

But DeSantis et al. are convinced higher education is a plot to produce an army of lefties.

Not that they can produce much evidence of this.

They’re more ideologically rigid than the most committed Trotskyite, and less logical than the American officer who, standing in the ruins of a Vietnamese provincial capital in 1968, told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Maybe the administration’s idea is to destroy higher ed in order to save it.

Hypotheticals

No doubt DeSantis took some comfort from the dissent in the 11th Circuit’s ruling.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former member of the Florida Supreme Court, (indeed, a DeSantis appointee and often mentioned as a potential U.S. Supreme Court justice), argues, what if “a professor who says that Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel was ‘exhilarating’ and something to be celebrated and encouraged?”

She goes on to say, “Florida acts well within its authority to curb professorial endorsements of that kind within its own classrooms.”

First of all, if someone were stupid enough to say such a thing, that professor could be disciplined for creating a hostile educational environment.

But taking a hypothetical case of poor judgment and concluding somehow professorial speech must always be equivalent to the views of the state violates the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects offensive speech — even hate speech.

In George Orwell’s essay “Freedom of the Press,” he writes, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Or to quote again from the majority opinion, the university’s mission is to get students to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

Professors call this “teaching.”

AN 7 26

A conservative judge on the Ninth Circuit drew rebuke from a colleague after urging the Supreme Court to summarily reverse some of the court’s Second Amendment decisions.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020. He has become known for his combative opinions and remarks. His confrontational language has more than once made him a target for rebukes from other colleagues on the bench.

Such was the case in an appeal of a concealed switchblade law in California, which is a strict ban stopping citizens from "carrying, possessing, or offering to sell or loan a switchblade to another person is a serious crime," explained one criminal law firm.

The law was challenged by knife rights advocates, who argued that it violates the Second Amendment. In the appeal of a lower court's denial, the 9th Circuit panel held the challenge failed because California’s switchblade law had at least one constitutional application: concealed carry.

In VanDyke's view, the decision was wrong. He argued that a concealed-carry prohibition cannot justify a total ban on public carry, and he called for Supreme Court “benchslaps” through summary reversals.

The plaintiffs called for an "en banc" review, and on Thursday, the panel of judges refused. VanDyke penned his own dissent, blasting his colleagues and demanding that the Supreme Court get involved because, for too long, it has allowed Second Amendment laws to remain ambiguous.

"I also write with a modest proposal," said VanDyke. "This case is just the latest chapter in our court’s long and concerning history of refusing to vindicate the Second Amendment. Come hell or high water, Heller or Bruen, our court will find a way to uphold any weapons restriction that a liberal State can dream up. And the Supreme Court’s occasional grant of certiorari [court review request] and reversal has done nothing—and I mean that literally— to change our court’s behavior."

He continued, "In the real world, no boss would tolerate nearly two decades of repeated defiance from a subordinate.

VanDyke's suggestion is that the Supreme Court "should consider summarily reversing some of our wayward Second Amendment decisions" across the 9th Circuit. "To put it more colloquially, it’s time for some benchslaps. Nothing less will give this court any pause before ultimately blessing every arms restriction it reviews."

The demand wasn't ignored. His colleague, Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Bill Clinton appointee, first blasted his dissent, accusing him of going beyond the case and attacking fellow judges, including the late Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

"Neither 'dissental' seriously disputes that California’s prohibition on the concealed carry of switchblade knives is consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition of arms regulation," Wardlaw wrote.

She goes on to explain that even if California can legally ban carrying switchblades hidden on your body, it still can’t use the same law to turn around and ban carrying them openly. It can't be okay in one situation but unconstitutional in the other.

She then turns to VanDyke individually, "Judge VanDyke’s dissent deserves but a brief response. While all agree that the Second Amendment is not 'a second-class right,' ...'constitutional rights . . . come with exceptions,' and, like the First Amendment, 'the Second Amendment is not absolute,'" she wrote, citing both Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

She alleges that VanDyke's dissent issues "attacks on colleagues’ credibility, including those who are deceased, simply because of differing views, is not."

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GUK

A federal judge nominated by Donald Trump during his first term reluctantly agreed on Friday to grant the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions against leaders of the Proud Boys who were convicted by a jury of serious crimes during the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021.

The US district judge Timothy Kelly noted in a seven-page memorandum that the Proud Boy leaders Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were all convicted of multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy, and a fourth member of the group, Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assaulting an officer and “breaking a Capitol window, thereby helping to create the first entry point through which hundreds of rioters streamed into the building”.

Pezzola’s destruction of the window was recorded in a social media video that quickly became one of the iconic images of the day.

Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were all sentenced to long prison terms in 2023. Upon returning to office in 2025, Trump commuted their sentences as part of a sweeping order granting clemency to about 1,500 people who had been charged with or convicted for participating in the Capital attack. However, their convictions were kept in place.

In April, the DoJ requested that an appeals court overturn the convictions. The appeals court approved the motion in May, sending the ruling back to Kelly. Kelly, in Friday’s memo, said he was granting the motion as “it is hard to see how any other course ... could make practical sense. Denying the motion would not somehow revive the convictions that the Court of Appeals vacated”.

Kelly, in Friday’s filing, went on to note that he was granting the motion to dismiss the prosecutions even though the request was clearly based not on facts or the law, but on Trump’s desire to excuse the violence of his supporters.

“[T]here is little mystery about why the Government is moving to dismiss this case, or whether dismissal is in fact what the Executive seeks,” Kelly observed. “President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 – whether those views are based on fact or fiction – are well known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them”.

Kelly also noted that the case was initiated “while President Trump was still in power” in the days after the attack.

“As the Court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event,” Kelly wrote. “It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured. It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government – Congress – that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’”

“Moving forward, if this Nation’s experiment in self-government is to last another 250 years, the American people – no matter their partisan preferences – will have to act together to preserve, protect and defend that miracle through our constitutional framework,” the Trump-appointed judge concluded.

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MSN = FOX?!

NO LNX

A Trump-appointed federal judge on Friday reluctantly dismissed the Jan. 6 prosecution of four Proud Boys members, saying the law left him no authority to block the Justice Department's request.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the case with prejudice against Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola after a federal appeals court had already vacated their convictions.

Judges signal support for ‘forever chemicals’ Superfund rule

By Ellie Borst | 01/20/2026

A federal appellate court panel did not seem swayed by industry groups’ plea to toss EPA’s hazardous substance designations for two types of PFAS.

Judges appeared ready to back EPA’s decision to designate two “forever chemicals” as hazardous under the federal Superfund law, keeping polluters on the hook for cleanups.

During oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday, the three-judge panel weighed arguments that EPA didn’t do enough to consider the costs the rule would impose on businesses.

That rule, one of the few Biden-era rules the Trump administration has said it will defend, adds PFOA and PFOS — two of the most-studied chemicals in the PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, family — to its list of “hazardous substances” under the Superfund law.

“The only question before us is could they [EPA] permissibly designate these chemicals as hazardous. And, they look at the science, and you haven’t contested any of this,” said Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee.

EPA concluded exposure to PFOA and PFOS was linked to increased risk of various cancers, liver damage, birth defects, immunosuppression and many other serious adverse health impacts.

“It just seems like that’s a categorically rational decision on the threshold question whether to designate or not,” Katsas said.

Elbert Lin, partner at the firm Hunton Andrews Kurth representing a coalition of industry groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, presented the case regarding “an internal inconsistency in how you treat costs and benefits” pertaining to the rule.

EPA during the rulemaking process estimated polluters may pay upwards of $18 million “in additional cleanup expenditures” per year.

“The problem here is with the way EPA did its analysis,” Lin said. “The point is that the EPA has decided that $18 million of new costs will be treated solely as benefits. That is a big conceptual swing, no matter what that number is.”

Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, contested that the number does matter.

“You have to show that it was going to make a difference, don’t you?” Millett asked. “It just seems to me you’re wanting a lot more in picking out those numbers.”

Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, also questioned Lin’s logic.

“I’m not exactly sure what you, even ideally, what you would like from this court,” Rao said.

“Our argument is that their interpretation of the statute is incorrect,” Lin said.

“What would we say the correct interpretation is?” Rao said. “Usually when you say that the agency has gotten it wrong, courts have some account of what the right interpretation is. I don’t see what that would be.”

That cost analysis was a factor EPA considered and “was not the central justification for the rule,” said Riley Walters, Justice Department counsel appearing on EPA’s behalf.

“We don’t think the court needs to decide whether EPA is required to consider cost,” Walters said, adding that the estimation analyses “were merely illustrative.”

It’s difficult to get an exact number because EPA calculates the price to clean up hazardous contamination on a site-by-site basis.

“The sort of precision they are looking for can’t be provided at this stage,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an Earthjustice attorney representing environmental advocacy groups in support of EPA’s rule. “When EPA lists a Superfund site, it has no idea how much the remediation of that site is going to cost. Here, we are stages before that. … This is a decision to add two substances to a list of some 800 hazardous substances.”

Millett said she thinks EPA has “dealt with the uncertainties and the complexities” in explaining its cost-benefit analysis approach.

“I don’t know what more we asked of them in this context,” Millett said.

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AN 5 26

A judge appointed by President Donald Trump — and who has been repeatedly accused of ignoring proper legal procedure to make decisions in his favor — is now blocking the release of files in a case regarding some of the most serious criminal charges previously filed against him.

“In an opposition brief on Tuesday, Trump attorney Kendra Wharton tore into the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight for persistent yet ‘meritless’ attempts to fast-track appeals,” reported Matt Naham from the legal news website Law and Crime. The “appeal” in question involves attempts by the pair of non-profits, which respectively focus on free speech rights and fighting government corruption, to prevent Judge Aileen Cannon from destroying Volume II of a criminal case involving Trump’s alleged stealing and misuse of classified state documents after his first term.

“In February, and after ignoring American Oversight and the Knight Institute's attempts to intervene in the closed criminal case for nearly a year, Cannon permanently blocked the DOJ from releasing Volume II,” Naham reported. “Prior to that ruling, the groups filed emergency appeals, fearing that Cannon would order Volume II's destruction. That did not happen, but the rush to prevent it has led to a messy appellate posture as to her denial of the groups' interventions.”

Defending the judge Trump appointed near the end of his first term, the president argued in a recent filing that the groups "should not be rewarded" with speedy relief. By contrast, the non-profits argued in their filing that “if anything” the "public's interest in prompt access to Volume II has […] intensified since January[.]"

They added, "The grounds the Court credited in granting expedition in January 2026 apply with equal or greater force now. The need for expedition does not diminish merely because a procedural prerequisite—consolidation—remains to be resolved. To the contrary: it is the absence of a ruling on consolidation that is now standing in the way of the expedited disposition this Court already ordered."

In their own filing, Trump’s legal team argued that “lacking any credible argument for expedition at this juncture in the proceedings, Appellants falsely assert that this Court has 'already determined' that good cause exists, and they wrongly accuse this Court of undue delay in declining to expedite the appeals, all while refusing to acknowledge that their own sequencing decisions and repeated missteps resulted in the very posture of which they now complain. At this point, Appellants' modus operandi is clear. They will continue to deflect, cause unnecessary motion practice, and cast aspersions against any judicial officer who does not deliver their desired outcome."

"The public interest in the Special Counsel's report is extraordinary, and the public right of access to the report requires timely access," Knight Institute senior counsel Scott Wilkens told Naham about this issue. He added that there is "no valid reason for further delay."

Writing in February for the legal news website Above The Law, Kathryn Rubino pointed out that Cannon has “showed her whole a—— as a partisan hack willing to do the bidding of Donald Trump.”

“She really upped her status as ‘favorite judge of the most aggressively red-hatted MAGA crowd’ when she dismissed the criminal case against Trump,” Rubino wrote. “Her theory — that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional — was… creative. So creative, in fact, that it flew directly into conflict with decades of precedent. But after Trump won the 2024 election, the DOJ dropped the appeal.”

The special prosecutor behind that case, Jack Smith, has refused to remain silent despite legal pressures to do so. Speaking at a private Washington DC event on April 20, Smith warned that “we have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn't like them…. We have a department that fails to investigate cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient narratives the president would like to press."

Similarly, last fall Smith spoke to a George Mason University audience and described how “my career has been about the rule of law, and I believe that today, it is under attack like in no other period in our lifetimes.”

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RWW

05/12/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Trump Melts Down Over Reflecting Pool Reports in Wild Posting Spre

The president isn’t exactly locking in ahead of his high-stakes visit to China this week.

Madiba K. Dennie @ Talking Points Memo: There’s an Easy Way to Tell That Trump’s Judicial Nominees Don’t Belong On the Bench

Trump has long lashed out when judges he nominated rule against his interests because he believes that his appointees are his to control. Now, Trump is publicly asserting that his expectation of fealty is, as he put it, “really OK.” Trump-appointed judges owe their positions to him, and Trump is signaling to judicial hopefuls that they should repay that debt with their court rulings.

Sherrilyn Ifill: White Supremacy Is an Antidemocracy Movement

If You Want Democracy in this Country You Have to Fight White Supremacy.

Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti @ The New York Times: A Racist Remark About Jeffries Sets Off Democratic Anger in Virginia

Representative Jen Kiggans, a Republican in a tough re-election fight, faced criticism after she agreed with comments by a local radio host that included a racist line about Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader.

Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Nick Fuentes Faces a Revolt From His Fellow Groypers and Groypettes

Federal agents, alleged assassination plots, and a Fyre Festival-like disaster!

Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: ‘This Is a Coup’: Trump Pal Laura Loomer Flips Out Over Obama Visit

Conspiracy theorist and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had an over-the-top reaction to former President Barack Obama’s visit with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Bill Scher @ Washington Monthly: Hondurasgate Looks Worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra Combined

Trump pardoned a right-wing authoritarian convicted of cocaine trafficking, apparently to reinstate him to power in Honduras and undermine left-wing governments in Mexico and Colombia. So why isn’t America media covering it?

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an march 18 2026

Over the course of President Donald Trump’s second term, says New York Times legal columnist Jeffrey Toobin, one pattern has stood out in regard to the federal judges he nominates. During their confirmation hearings, when asked who won the 2020 presidential election, they consistently word their responses to leave the door open for election denial.

At each hearing, Senate Judiciary member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) typically asks the same question: “Who won the popular vote in 2020?”

And every time, he receives some variation of the same response: “President Biden was certified and served four years as president.”

The key word there is “certified.” While it acknowledges that Biden was indeed named president, it doesn’t explicitly state that he outright “won” the election. This, says Toobin, is a blatant attempt to curry favor with Trump, who six years later still denies his loss on a regular basis.

Responses like this are common among Trump nominees to any government position, but according to Toobin, “There is a special peril when federal judges, who serve for life if confirmed, agree to demean themselves in this fashion.”

Blumenthal told Toobin that he always asks judicial nominees about the 2020 election as a “test of whether they are willing to stand up and be independent arbiters of fact, which they are required to be as district court judges, who often have to show some courage and backbone with cases with unpopular causes. The fact that they are so meek and easily cowed speaks volumes about their qualifications for the job.”

These days, such cowed behavior from nominees speaks to a new requirement for Trump approval: absolute loyalty. While during his first term he was content to select judges from a list provided by the conservative Federalist Society — judges who were more dedicated to conservative ideology than any one president — during his second term, he has made it clear that he expects personal loyalty above all else.

As an example for this, Toobin pointed to Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, two Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump who drew his ire after ruling against his tariffs. For Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, the decision was likely motivated by little more than their interpretation of the law. But for Trump, this was an act of betrayal. He didn’t merely express disapproval of their decision, but declared them “an embarrassment to their families.”

To Toobin, this kind of reaction portends that Trump will from now on select only judges he thinks are directly loyal to him above all else.

For his part, Senator Blumenthal says that with each nomination, he will continue to press the question of the 2020 election.

“I keep waiting for one or two of them to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to say this nonsense. I’ve got plenty of other ways to make a living,’” he said. During one recent hearing, he was blunt with his words to a stonewalling nominee: “Don’t you feel kind of like monkeys or puppets here?”

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an march 18 2026

Trump 'loyalty test' for judicial appointments inadvertently hamstrings courts - Alternet.org

During the first Trump administration, reshaping the federal judiciary was among the president’s central goals, and over the course of four years, he successfully confirmed over 200 judges. This played a dramatic role in pushing the judiciary to the political right, most notably in the Supreme Court, where Trump appointed three justices. While he ended up seating the second-highest number of judges within a single term in US history, during his second term, Trump’s judicial appointments have slowed precipitously, reports CBS.

"Getting good judges on the courts was a very high priority in the first administration,” said Ed Whelan, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “I don't think it's as high a priority in this administration for three reasons.”

He went on to explain that one reason could be that they were so successful at it during the first term that the administration is placing more emphasis elsewhere. That brings the second reason, which is that Trump is now prioritizing executive action. And finally, “there just aren't as many seats available.”

According to experts, this lack of open seats may be a consequence of two factors. On one hand, there are simply fewer seats to fill after Trump previously filled so many. But on the other, many judges who are currently sitting may be avoiding retirement as they fear being replaced based on a “loyalty test” to the president rather than a dedication to the rule of law.

“I think it could be,” said Russell Wheeler, judicial confirmation researcher at the Brookings Institute, “they just don't want to give him vacancies to fill."

"No judge is going to be excited about the prospect of a president selecting future nominees based on any conception of loyalty to the occupant of the White House," explained Gregg Nunziata, former chief nominations counsel for Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "That offends judges across the ideological spectrum, including judges who were appointed by the president and who generally think well of the president and really don't like that mindset or that rhetoric, and I think broadly view it as damaging to the judiciary."

And, Nunziata elaborated, there is good reason for judges to have such concerns.

"He certainly began this administration trying to staff the executive branch with nominees more distinguished by personal loyalty than anything else,” said Nunziata, “and the pattern of those appointments to the executive branch, including people he's tried to place into positions of U.S. attorneys, I think give considerable rise to a concern that he will apply such a loyalty test to the judiciary and particularly if a Supreme Court vacancy should open.”

One thing that could complicate further Trump judicial nominations: a Senate flip due to a major Democratic victory in the midterms. While experts say this isn’t a likely outcome, Trump’s plunging approval ratings suggest that it is increasingly possible.

According to Whelan, "The big question is, do Republicans retain control of the Senate in the elections? If they don't, the [judicial appointment] numbers in Trump's last two years are going to be very, very low if not zero. But even if they do, it just isn't clear that there will be that many seats that become available."

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AN 3 28 26

Attorneys representing Fulton County faced off against the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court Friday, seeking the return of more than 650 boxes of 2020 election records that FBI agents seized from a county elections warehouse in January.

The hearing, which was held in a federal courthouse in Atlanta, was scheduled last week after the judge announced that attempts at mediation had been unsuccessful.

Justification for January’s raid, which was authorized by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas, relied heavily on recycled claims of irregularities during the 2020 election, which critics say have already been adjudicated or debunked in the nearly six years since the election took place.

Fulton County, which is home to much of the city of Atlanta, was also at the center of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia and other swing states.

Abbe Lowell, who represented the county, argued Friday that an affidavit used to justify the raid relied on inaccurate testimony, with witnesses who “completely misstate each of the alleged problems.” He also argued that Salinas was given incomplete information about the significance of documents like ballot images and double-scanned ballots, and that she may have reached a different conclusion if she had been given more accurate information.

Expert witness Ryan Macias, an election technology expert who served as an advisor for Fulton County during the 2020 election, also testified that the events outlined in the affidavit include routine mistakes and were not indicative of any intentional misconduct.

But attorney Michael Weisbuch, who represented the federal government, argued that federal agents who drafted the affidavit did include opposing perspectives and that the raid didn’t amount to a “callous disregard” of the county’s rights.

He also argued that Fulton County has access to copies of the election records and that county officials have yet to produce a compelling reason why they need the original documents returned.

Judge J. P. Boulee, a Trump appointee, did not say when he would issue a ruling in the case.

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts expressed concern about the Trump administration attempting to take control over elections, and said the federal government could use similar tactics to seize election documents in other states.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is a blueprint,” Pitts said. “If they’re successful here, in Fulton County, they will take this show on the road, and that’s why we’re going to fight fire with fire. We’re going to fight like hell to make sure that that does not happen.”

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AN 3 26

At each hearing, Senate Judiciary member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) typically asks the same question: “Who won the popular vote in 2020?”

And every time, he receives some variation of the same response: “President Biden was certified and served four years as president.”

As an example for this, Toobin pointed to Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, two Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump who drew his ire after ruling against his tariffs. For Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, the decision was likely motivated by little more than their interpretation of the law. But for Trump, this was an act of betrayal. He didn’t merely express disapproval of their decision, but declared them “an embarrassment to their families.”

To Toobin, this kind of reaction portends that Trump will from now on select only judges he thinks are directly loyal to him above all else.

For his part, Senator Blumenthal says that with each nomination, he will continue to press the question of the 2020 election.

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Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling on Monday morning that declared no person will be allowed to release information about President Donald Trump's classified documents case. But at one point in her ruling, she made an absurd claim — and one legal expert is calling her out.

"All Rise News" reporter Adam Klasfeld noted that when Cannon blocked the release of Volume II of Smith's report, she said she "'strains to find' an example of a report released after 'initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.' Most of John Durham's [targets] were acquitted. He released a report."

One person in the Durham case pleaded guilty "to falsifying an email."

Durham was hired to "investigate the investigators" involved with the Robert Mueller probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While Durham attempted to indict three people, two were acquitted, and the final one accepted the guilty plea and received probation. By contrast, Mueller prosecuted 34 people and earned 8 guilty pleas or convictions.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh helped write the report by special counsel Ken Starr, which also didn't have any prosecutions for a crime.

"Judge Cannon, who appears to have been born yesterday, ignores that the entire Mueller report, which was made public, was about the un-indicted president who appointed her — and against whom a finding of guilt was never reached," agreed legal reporter Christian Fairas.

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Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked another effortto obtain part two of special counsel Jack Smith's report regarding the documents President Donald Trump stole from the White House upon leaving in 2021. Among the documents Trump took and refused to return were a number of highly classified pages.

While there have been other instances of documents being packed for officials like Vice President Mike Pence and then Vice President Joe Biden, all other officials have been willing to return any documents requested. Trump refused to return the information, the AP characterized in 2023.

In her ruling on Monday, Cannon said that everyone involved with the Justice Department is "enjoined from releasing" the report. It was scheduled to be released to the public on Tuesday.

Reporter Mona Burns wrote on BlueSky, "Fitting on this crazy snowy morning: The always reliable and very corrupt Judge Aileen Cannon has permanently blocked the release of Jack Smith's classified documents report. Cannon says the release would be 'unfair' to Trump and his former co-defendants."

Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that Cannon "also bars DOJ from sharing 'any information or conclusions' from the volume. A sweeping, perpetual gag order."

"Cannon scathingly suggests that Jack Smith violated her order dismissing the criminal case against Trump when he continued to prepare his report on the prosecution from transmission to DOJ. Calls it a 'brazen stratagem' meant to 'circumvent' her authority," Stern added.

"Absurd. Also, what is the 'spirit' of a dismissal order?" questioned lawyer and analyst David R. Lurie.

"Cannon apparently considers Smith’s preparation of his final report as a violation of her order dismissing the classified documents case," commented Politico Washington law and lobbying reporter Daniel Barnes on X.

Former federal prosecutor and MS NOW legal commentator Joyce Vance noted, "A higher court may well disagree with Canon’s ruling, however. It wouldn’t be the first time. And the case is already on appeal to the 11th Circuit. I wrote about the context last night."

"That deadline was set after the Eleventh Circuit chastised Judge Cannon for dragging her feet in the matter. But when she finally got around to setting the date, she noted that Trump could appeal, which he, of course, did. Delay. Delay. Delay. Earlier this month, journalists who had previously intervened in the matter to force the release of the report went to the Eleventh Circuit," wrote Vance for her Substack.

"That court has expedited the matter, which means Trump and his supporters have briefs due next month. His delay game is still holding up, but unless the Supreme Court weighs in on his side again in a criminal matter, there’s a limited shelf life on this one. ... Other events to watch for this week: On Tuesday, Secretaries of State who have decided to participate will meet with the FBI on unspecified issues. We discussed that meeting here," she added.

The watchdog group American Oversight posted on X last week, "Trump is trying to convince Judge Cannon to destroy all copies of Volume II of Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s handling of classified documents. We warned AG Pam Bondi and top officials at the National Archives that this would break the law."

“The destruction of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report would be an extraordinary and unlawful erasure of a federal record documenting an investigation of profound public importance. The FRA imposes a clear and nondiscretionary duty on the DOJ and NARA to preserve federal records, regardless of pressure from the president and his co-conspirators or their pending motions before a court,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of the group, commented on matter in a statement.

“Special Counsel Smith testified under oath in Congress that the report documents powerful evidence that President Trump willfully retained highly classified information after leaving office, putting our national security at risk. Destroying the report would shield the president from public scrutiny and undermine the rule of law itself. Federal records belong to the American people, not to any president or administration seeking to bury the truth. If the DOJ or NARA permits the destruction of this report, they will be violating federal law," she added.

Former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said, "Man, if ever a judicial appointment paid off for Trump, it was this one! This classified documents case seemed like the most menacing to @realDonaldTrump . Judge Cannon blocked it on a technicality and now is permanently burying it from public view. SCOTUS here she comes!?!?"

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an 2 26

Back in 1982, the Federalist Society was founded with the goal of pushing U.S. courts to the right. And their efforts have been successful: Although Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the United States' last nine presidential elections, six of the U.S. Supreme Court's justices are GOP appointees. Three of them — Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — were championed by the Federalist Society and appointed by Donald Trump during his first presidency.

Not all of the conservatives who have been active in the Federalist Society over the years, however, are pro-MAGA. Attorney George Conway and retired Judge J. Michael Luttig are on the right but very much in the Never Trump camp.

Meanwhile, the American Constitution Society (ACS), founded at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in 2001, was modeled after the Federalist Society, but with the goal of moving the U.S. courts in a more liberal/progressive direction.

In an op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on February 16, legal expert Jeffrey Toobin stresses that the "new leadership" at ACS has "a new goal: to expand the use of the courts to oppose President Trump's agenda."

New ACS President Phil Brest, Toobin notes, helped former President Joe Biden "nominate and win confirmation of 235 federal judges."

"Those judges — and others appointed by Democratic presidents — have proved that the most effective resistance to Mr. Trump has come not from Democratic politicians, but rather, from federal judges," Toobin explains. "In the last several weeks alone, these judges, many of them Biden appointees, have ordered the release from immigration custody of five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father and their return to their home in Minnesota; blocked the Trump Administration from ending temporary protections from deportation that had been granted to thousands of Ethiopians living in the United States; and directed the Trump Administration to allow members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities."

Toobin adds, "According to a Times analysis of federal appeals court rulings in 2025, judges nominated by Mr. Biden ruled in support of Mr. Trump’s policies 25 percent of the time, while those appointed by Mr. Trump supported him 92 percent of the time.

Toobin notes that when the Federalist Society was created in 1982, the "liberalism of the Warren Court era still influenced the Supreme Court." Chief Justice Earl Warren was a Republican nominee of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, yet many decisions applauded by liberal and progressives — from New York Times v. Sullivan to Griswold v. Connecticut to Stanley v. Georgia — came from the Warren Court.

In 2026, Toobin argues, Democrats need to understand what worked for the Federalist Society and use their methods to move the federal courts to the left.

"The members of the Federalist Society took the risk that Democratic legal thinkers have so far avoided," Toobin observes. "Though the Federalist Society does not as a group take formal positions on issues, the Federalists gave a platform for their clear agenda and absorbed the criticism that came with it. But when they won elections and thus seats on the Supreme Court, they knew what they wanted to do and why, and they changed the face of American law. Democrats can do the same, but first they have to try."

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an 2 26

spox most transparent admin in hist while denying info access?

Before concluding his work as special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Jack Smith submitted a two-volume report on his federal prosecutions of Donald Trump — the first volume on his election interference case (which was assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan), the second volume on his Mar-a-Lago documents case (which was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee).

Volume 1 was released in January 2025, although Chutkan dismissed the election interference case without prejudice at Smith's request. After Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Smith cited DOJ's policy against prosecuting a sitting president when he made his request to Chutkan.

Volume 2, however, remains unreleased, and two groups — American Oversight and Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute — are urging the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to order Cannon to make it public in redacted form.

Law & Crime reporter Matt Naham, in an article published on February 10, explains, "The latter volume has never seen the outside of Cannon's chambers. Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who threw out Trump's Espionage Act prosecution and ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel, has, for a calendar year, kept Volume 2 of Smith's report out of public view. At first, the rationale behind the injunction was preventing 'prejudice' to valet Waltine Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira Mar-a-Lago property manager, former Trump co-defendants who had active appeals. But those appeals went away when the Trump Administration dropped the cases, following Trump's inauguration, and so did the prospect that Nauta and de Oliveira will face charges in the future, according to the Knight Institute."

In a legal brief filed on February 9, the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, "There is also no risk that a future administration will revive the charges, because the five-year statute of limitations that applies to the charges will expire in 2028, before President Trump leaves office. It is thus disingenuous for Nauta and De Oliveira to represent that they remain in 'jeopardy' and that as a result 'their due process rights remain a serious concern that strongly outweighs any interest that the Government or the public might have in the release of the Special Counsel's Report.'"

Cannon's injunction against the release of Volume 2 expires on February 24, and American Oversight is arguing that her reason for the injunction "no longer exists."

"Before the expiration date," Naham notes, "Trump and his former co-defendants have each supported Cannon issuing an order which would 'permanently' block the DOJ from releasing 'so-called Special Counsel' Smith's 'unlawfully prepared' report and destroy it."

Trump was facing four criminal indictments when he won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination: Smith's two federal cases, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference/RICO case, and then-Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money case. Trump was convicted on 34 criminal counts in Bragg's case, but all four cases were doomed when he won the 2024 election.In an official statement, American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said the group "will not allow the president and his guard dogs to bury information that belongs to the American people."

Chukwu stated, "For more than a year, Judge Cannon has kept the Special Counsel's final report under seal, long after any legitimate claims by Trump's co-conspirators expired. By blocking our effort to challenge her gag order, the court handed President Trump a roadmap for burying the report through delay and procedural gamesmanship."

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AN 12 25

After returning to the White House 11 months ago, President Donald Trump not only made a concerted effort to fill his administration, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI with MAGA loyalists — he also pushed for far-right judges to be confirmed for the lower federal courts.

But according to HuffPost reporter Jennnifer Bendery, Trump's push for MAGA-friendly federal judges is encountering a bump in the road: fewer retirements.

"President Donald Trump had a pretty good run in 2025 when it came to confirming judges," Bendery explains in an article published on December 29. "Republicans control the Senate and rubber-stamped most of his court picks, confirming a total of 25 lifetime federal judges. That's more than Trump got by this point in his first term (19), though not as many as former President Joe Biden (40). But the president was also hampered by a surprising new trend among sitting judges: They're not retiring when they're eligible to do so, and in effect, they've been denying Trump the ability to fill more vacancies with his picks."

Bendery notes that according to George Washington University law professor John Collins, only 30 court vacancies have been announced.

"Of those, 27 are on district courts and just three are on appeals courts — a more powerful tier of courts that often has the final say in federal lawsuits," Bendery observes. "Compare those numbers to the roughly 70 court vacancies that opened up during this same period in (former President Joe) Biden's first year in office — more than twice as many. Part of the reason there aren't as many vacancies to fill is because Trump and Biden both appointed huge numbers of judges over the last eight years, leaving a smaller pool of retirement-eligible judges."

Bendery adds, "But another reason is almost certainly that some judges simply don’t trust Trump to replace them with a qualified pick, given his record of putting far-right ideologues, loyalists and otherwise unqualified people onto the federal bench."

Collins told HuffPost that the judges deciding against retirement is "one of the biggest stories this year." And Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution told HuffPost, "It's really pretty striking: Judges, for one reason or another, aren't stepping away."

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trump judge loss

Late Thursday morning, December 18, the news broke that federal Judge Trevor McFadden —an appointee of President Donald Trump — had rejected a lawsuit brought by major Trump allies: the America First Legal Foundation, a far-right MAGA legal group.

According to Politico's Josh Gerstein, America First Legal was "trying to demand records" using the Freedom of Information Act. But Gerstein notes that McFadden, in his America First Legal Foundation v. John G. Roberts ruling, "says Congress 'excused' itself [and] judiciary."

McFadden, in a 21-page court document, wrote, "The Freedom of Information Act announced a policy of broad disclosure of government documents. Broad disclosure, however, does not mean unlimited disclosure. While FOIA promises access to many Executive Branch records, Congress excused itself and the courts from FOIA’s reach. In 2024, America First Legal Foundation ('America First') requested various documents from the Judicial Conference of the United States and Administrative Office of the United States under FOIA. Both entities rejected the request on the basis that they are part of the Judiciary, so FOIA does not apply to them. America First disagreed."

The Trump-appointed federal judge continued, "Taking a narrower view of FOIA's court-documents carve out, America First sees the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office as agencies subject to FOIA. So America First sued and asks the Court to compel the heads of the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office to comply with its FOIA request. See Am. Compl., ECF No. 2."

McFadden noted that the "defendants moved to dismiss America First's Complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim."

The judge wrote, "Under Rule 12(b)(1), this Court presumes it lacks subject matter jurisdiction. See Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). Federal courts have limited jurisdiction and 'possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.' Id. And when a defendant brings a challenge under Rule 12(b)(1), the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that the court has jurisdiction. See id."

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Trump's policiescracking down on undocumented immigrants by ramping up ICE authorities are facing sustained and growing push back from judges, according to a new analysis from Politico, including several that were appointed by him.

Politico's reporting on Friday concerned a policy Trump instituted back in July, calling for all individuals facing deportation proceedings to be jailed without the possibility of seeking a release. Though the Trump administration has defended its crackdown by claiming that it is being applied to dangerous and violent criminals, Politico noted that many of the immigrants targeted by this new policy "have lived in the U.S. for years, and sometimes decades, without incident and have been pursuing asylum or other forms of legal status."

The response to this rule sparked a "tidal wave of emergency lawsuits" claiming it violated immigration laws and immigrants' due-process rights. As of Friday morning, when its piece was published, Politico found that in an overwhelming percentage of these lawsuits, judges ruled against Trump's policy, with a good number of them being judges he himself appointed.

At least 225 judges have ruled in more than 700 cases that the administration’s new policy, which also deprives people of an opportunity to seek release from an immigration court, is a likely violation of law and the right to due process," the report explained. "Those judges were appointed by all modern presidents — including 23 by Trump himself — and hail from at least 35 states, according to a Politico analysis of thousands of recent cases."

The rate at which legal opposition to Trump's immigrant detention policy has grown is also considerable, with the number of judges who have ruled against the administration doubling in just the last month.

The scale of the push back feels even greater when considering the inverse: Politico found that only eight judges in the entire country, six of whom were Trump appointees, ruled in favor of the administration's position.

Judges have also grown "exasperated" by the volume of litigation flowing into their courts as a result of Trump's policy, making it difficult for them to keep up.

“The Court is unable to remain current on all new case authority supporting the Court’s conclusion, given the continued onslaught of litigation being generated by [the administration’s] widespread illegal detention practices,” U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, a federal judge in California originally appointed by Bill Clinton, said in a comment from last week.

“Dozens of district courts across the nation — with more each day — have rejected DHS’s expansion of … mandatory detention,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, another Clinton appointee in Idaho. “This court joins the overwhelming majority.”

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AN 11 25

Texas’ plan to gerrymander its congressional map in favor of Republicans hit a massive snag on Tuesday as a federal panel of judges struck down the new district map on the grounds that they discriminated against minority groups.

The decision was handled down by a panel of three federal judges after a nine-day hearing last month in the case brought against the state of Texas voting rights advocates and minority voters. The judges — Obama, Reagan, and Trump appointees, respectively — found in favor of the plaintiffs arguments that the new map unlawfully gerrymanders based on minority communities.

As a result, the state will be required to continue using the congressional maps drawn back in 2021 and enjoined from using the new one passed into law over the summer. The fight is far from over, however, with Democracy Docket reporting that the ruling is highly likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has been known to rule in favor of conservatives more often than not in recent years.

Congressional district maps are typically redrawn once a decade, based on new census data, to create districts that better reflect shifting demographics. Both parties have long been accused of redrawing state maps to better ensure they hang on to power, a process known as “gerrymandering.”

In defiance of this once-a-decade norm, the Texas state legislature passed new maps over the summer designed to create five new majority Republican districts in the state, thereby helping the party retain a majority in the House of Representatives. This came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who has called for as many GOP-controlled states as possible to do so in order to stop a potential Democratic majority in the 2026 midterms that could stunt his administration’s goals.

“When Texas tried to steal 5 seats, I said to watch the litigation my law firm had filed because we had a good chance of winning in court,” Marc Elias, founder of the voting rights focused Elias Law Group, wrote in a post to BlueSky following the ruling. “Today a federal court BLOCKED THE MAP.”

California’s recent Proposition 50 was drafted in response to this move from Texas, allowing the Golden State to alter its redistricting rules and redraw its map to create enough Democratic majority districts to counteract Texas. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by voters in the state, though it does feature a provision that will nullify itself if Texas’s gerrymander is definitively blocked.

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an 11 25

An appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss President Donald Trump's years-old $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, deeming it "unpersuasive" and "meritless," reports *The New Republic*.

Trump sued the cable news network in 2022, for using the term “the Big Lie” in its coverage of "Trump’s debunked claims of sweeping election fraud that supposedly robbed him of a second term in the White House in 2020," The New Republic writes.

“Trump has not adequately alleged the falsity of CNN’s statements. Therefore, he has failed to state a defamation claim,” wrote 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom, and Elizabeth L. Branch in an eight-page filing.

“Trump’s other arguments are likewise meritless," the judges wrote.

Trump nominated both Newsom and Branch, as well as District Judge Raag Singhal, who first dismissed the case in July.

Trump also accused CNN of using “the Big Lie” to create a “false and incendiary association” between him and "Adolf Hitler, who originally coined the term in Mein Kampf," The New Republicexplains, "But the lower court ruled that “bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.”

The panel of appeals court judges ruled that Trump’s argument was “unpersuasive,” because the term “Big Lie” did not "constitute a statement of fact," they report.

“This assumption is untenable,” the judges wrote, adding that "Trump’s argument hinges on the fact that his own interpretation of his conduct — i.e., that he was exercising a constitutional right to identify his concerns with the integrity of elections — is true and that CNN’s interpretation — i.e., that Trump was peddling his ‘Big Lie’ — is false. However, his conduct is susceptible to multiple subjective interpretations, including CNN’s."

This is the latest in a series of failed lawsuits Trump has issued against media companies reporting on his lies, including a $15 billion defamation suitagainst The New York Times that was dismissed in September.

“We have held that, by using ‘Big Lie’ to describe Trump, CNN was not publishing a false statement of fact. Therefore, whether CNN used ‘Big Lie’ one time or many is irrelevant to the question of falsity,” the judges said.

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AN 11 25

Trump has appointed 27 judges to federal courts so far in his second term, and in addition to their right-wing interpretation of the law, an analysis of the judges’ comments to senators during the confirmation process reveals a key commonality between the president’s appointees: All were willing to evade direct questions about whether Trump lost the 2020 election and whether the US Capitol was attacked by a violent pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021.

Demand Justice examined the Questions for the Record (QFRs) that were submitted by the Senate to the 27 judicial nominees regarding the election and January 6, and found that their answers to those two specific questions were nearly uniform in many cases—repeating certain phrases verbatim and “overall, using unusual and evasive language that’s almost entirely outside the normal, historical, and common lexicon used to describe such events.”

None of the 27 nominees affirmatively answered that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as proven by numerous courts that rejected lawsuits claiming otherwise and by both Republican and Democratic election officials. Instead, the nominees said Biden was “certified” as the winner, and 16 of them said he “served” as president.

Some of the nominees, including Emil Bove of the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Whitney Hermandorfer of the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Kyle Dudek of the Middle District of Florida, expanded on their answers, saying they would avoid “opining on the broader political or policy debate regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.”

Demand Justice said those comments “strongly, and falsely,” suggested the 2020 election results are still a matter of legal dispute.

Josh Orton, president of the group, told MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that the nominees’ answers preserved “their ability to say, ‘I did not contradict Donald Trump’ on what we know are the two most third-rail issues to Donald Trump.”

“If nominees don’t answer these two questions, I think it amounts to, essentially, a political loyalty test,” said Orton.

Regarding questions about whether the US Capitol was attacked on January 6 and whether the attack was an insurrection, said Demand Justice, “not one nominee was willing to speak to the events that occurred on that day.”

Twenty-one of them, including Bove, Hermandorfer, and Joshua Divine of District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, characterized the attack—in which Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results—as a matter of debate.

None of the nominees mentioned the law enforcement officers who died as a result of the attack, even though some mentioned violence against law enforcement broadly in their other QFR answers; the fact that the House and Senate chambers were broken into; or the death threats rioters directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“It is unprecedented for lifetime nominees to the federal bench to provide dishonest and misleading answers about historical facts—and it is deeply concerning that Trump’s nominees are parroting such strikingly similar language, the president’s own language, to avoid telling the truth,” said Orton.

Orton added that “the kicker” of the report is that 15 members of the Democratic Caucus have voted for Trump’s judicial nominees despite their evasive and dishonest answers about January 6 and Trump’s 2020 loss.

“Excuse me? People died,” said Orton. “If you’re willing to appease Trump’s big lies, you have no business anywhere near a court, period.”

Democrats who have voted in favor of confirming Trump’s nominees include Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).

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ice policy

an 10 25

Over 100 judges have ruled against this Trump policy — including 12 of his own appointees

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an 10 25

Deputy Editor Jason Linkins tells the New Republic that “Senate-brained Democrats” are still “naïvely” pretending the Republican Senate is an independent working body rather than a Congressional wing of the White House. They also appear to think “they can revive this moribund body, through actions that at best send mixed messages and at worst directly undermine the work of Democrats like Jeff Merkley.”

“Case in point: This week, amid the government shutdown, 13 Democratic senators joined forces with all but one Republican to advance the nomination of Harold Mooty to a judgeship in the Northern District of Alabama,” Linkins said.

But some “fun facts” about Mooty: During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Mooty pledged his allegiance to one man over law by refusing to provide a direct answer as to who won the 2020 election. He also doggedly refused to take questions regarding his thoughts on the January 6 Capitol riots.

“When it comes to deal-breakers, to each their own, but I find it puzzling that these weren’t some crimson flags for Senate Democrats,” Linkins said. “But even if they weren’t, everyone should understand that the only role a Republican judicial nominee plays in American life is serving Trump as if he was their personal legal client and backstopping his savage corruption. For that reason alone, there should never be a Democratic name signed to the advancement of Trump’s judges.”

The Democrats who openly voted to appoint a Jan. 6 denier include Sens. Chris Coons (Del.) Dick Durbin (Ill.) John Fetterman (Pa.) Mark Kelly (Ariz.) Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), among others. **Even Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who catches no end of verbal abuse and name-calling from President Donald Trump (“Shifty Schiff,” “Watermelon Head,” “Pencil Neck,” and “Adam Schitt”) meekly gave Trump his way on his confederate-style judge, according to Linkins.

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Linkins’ theory for the doormat behavior includes senators believing these kinds of votes help “bolster democracy” and “show the ol’ ship of state is still humming along, normal business and regular order is possible, and that we aren’t so far off from recovery.”

“Folks, I would love to believe that a small overture might seed a future coming together of polarized parties. But if watching schoolchildren get shot to pieces several times a year isn’t going to foster that fellowship, then we’re definitely not getting there by throwing the other side a bone in the form of Harold Mooty,” Linkins argued. “The government is shut down, there’s a hole in the White House, the president is ordering extrajudicial killings in Latin America as part of some run-up to a regime change war, and citizens are getting snatched off the streets by Brett Kavanaugh–inspired goons.”

“The system so loved by the Senate-brained is currently offline! And these votes to approve the odd judicial candidate are simply small enabling acts that only help to fuel the disorder,” Linkins said.

LESSIG SUPERPAC MAINE 10 25

NOM

latest-filings-campaign-finance-court-battle-argue-maine-has-legal-right-regulate-super

The next piece of the puzzle for the group hoping to get the U.S. Supreme Court to establish greater regulations on money in elections was laid on Wednesday.

Two appeals were filed in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston after a federal district court in July ruled that a 2024 Maine law overwhelmingly passed by voters was unconstitutional. The law placed limits on contributions to political action committees that independently spend money to try to support or defeat candidates, commonly referred to as super PACs.

One of the briefs is from Attorney General Aaron Frey on behalf of the state of Maine. The other is from the committee behind the referendum and the non-profit Equal Citizens, spearheaded by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, who has been attempting to bring this issue to the high court for years.

Both make the case that the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission actually allows for super PACs to be regulated.

The brief from the interveners incorporates a second originalism argument, which is notable since the party that instigated the lawsuit is made up of conservative political action committees.

Charles Miller of the Institute for Free Speech and Joshua Dunlap of Pierce Atwood (now nominee for the First Circuit) filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in 2024 on behalf of Dinner Table Action, which was founded by state Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and activist Alex Titcomb, and For Our Future, which is run by Titcomb. They argue that the law restricts free speech.

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10 21 25 2 TRUMP JUDGE DEM DOCK

Legal experts are sounding the alarm on a shocking federal appeals court ruling that all but permitted President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops into Portland, Oregon. They warn that, if upheld, the order would give Trump unbridled power to use the military domestically.

Two Trump appointed judges on a three-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted Monday to stay a lower court ruling blocking Trump’s deployment in the City of Roses.

The full 9th Circuit is set to vote on whether to rehear the case.

The two circuit court judges claimed that U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who was also appointed by Trump, incorrectly questioned the president’s decision to federalize 200 Oregon National Guard members and deploy them to the city late last month.

Trump’s deployment is still blocked by a second order from Immergut that remains in effect. However, shortly after the Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked Immergut to dissolve her second order, which would officially allow Trump to move soldiers into Portland.

Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on presidential emergency powers, wrote on social media Tuesday it was “one of the most dangerous and legally flawed court decisions I’ve seen this year.”

Goitein noted that Judges Bridget Bade and Ryan Nelson — the Trump appointees on the panel — significantly expanded the president’s ability to federalize and deploy Guard troops domestically by arguing that he should be allowed to cite prior unrest in Portland, or even unrest in other parts of the country, to justifying a military intervention in a city.

“By this logic, Trump should be able to deploy the military today—in Portland and many other cities—to address conduct that occurred during the 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd,” Goitein wrote.

The ruling, Goitein wrote, was “clearly” an incorrect reading of 10 U.S.C. 12406 (Title 10), the archaic statute Trump used to federalize Oregon’s troops. It allows the president to federalize state Guard troops when the country faces foreign invasion, when the U.S. government faces rebellion or when the president is unable to execute laws with regular resources.

Goitein added that through their ruling, Bade and Nelson undermined First Amendment rights by upholding the Trump administration’s conclusion that the president was unable to execute the law in Portland without the Guard’s assistance.

Trump claimed in late September Guard troops were needed to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from “domestic terrorists” who had an ICE facility in the “War ravaged” city “under siege.” The Trump administration further claimed that the recent anti-ICE demonstrations in the city amounted to a “rebellion” against the U.S. government.

State and local police officials pushed back on Trump’s interpretation of conditions in the city, saying in court filings that demonstrations near the facility were largely sedate gatherings of a few dozen people that could be managed by local and state resources.

“It is hard to overstate how misguided and dangerous this ruling is,” Goitein wrote. “Even where protests involve acts of violence, deploying the military is illegal unless that violence reaches a level where state and local law enforcement are completely overwhelmed.”

Writing in a minority opinion Monday, Susan Graber, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, also criticized Nelson and Bade’s ruling for threatening freedom of speech.

“It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions,” Graber wrote.

Athul Acharya, the executive director of the nonprofit civil-rights law firm Public Accountability, pointed out that Nelson, through a concurring opinion, took a more extreme position than Bade.

Nelson adopted the Trump administration’s argument that courts have no authority to question a president’s decision to federalize troops under Title 10. In taking that position, he was disagreeing with precedent set by a separate Ninth Circuit panel over Trump’s deployment in Los Angeles.

In that case, the other panel rejected the Trump administration’s arguments that courts can’t review Title 10 federalizations but also held that any judicial review must be “highly deferential” to the president.

That was the position Bade took as well, though she found that Immergut misapplied the “highly deferential” standard by disagreeing with Trump’s assessment of unrest in Portland.

“Love that ‘the president can use the National Guard to invade Portland’ is the moderate position here,” Acharya wrote on social media. “Ryan Nelson would’ve held that as long as Trump recites some magic words, he can do whatever he wants with the National Guard, whenever, wherever.”

Marty Lederman, a Georgetown Law professor and former DOJ attorney, highlighted that while Bade and Nelson at length argued why they were deferring Trump’s determination that he was unable to execute the law in Portland, they never recognized such a determination from the president.

Trump announced the Portland military deployment through a series of social media posts. In oral arguments, the DOJ argued that the posts were Trump’s formal determination that troops were needed. Bade and Nelson, however, ultimately rejected that argument, leaving no formal determination from the president.

In addition to being heavily criticized by legal experts, Bade and Nelson’s ruling may soon be scrutinized by their colleagues as well. Shortly after they issued their order, a Ninth Circuit judge requested that the court vote on whether a larger panel should rehear the Trump administration’s appeal of Immergut’s ruling.

This is known as an “en banc” — or “on the bench” — hearing and usually means that all judges in the appellate court, rather than a smaller panel, hear a case.

However, the Ninth Circuit’s en banc process is unique given its size. As the largest appellate circuit in the country, it has 29 active judgeships, which is far too many to participate in a rehearing.

Instead, the full court takes a vote on whether to rehear an appeal. If approved, a limited en banc court composed of 11 judges — the chief judge and 10 others drawn at random — convenes for a rehearing.

Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor, noted that due to this unique process, the full Ninth Circuit, which leans liberal, will likely vote to rehear the Trump administration’s appeal, but the limited en banc court could uphold Bade and Nelson’s ruling depending on which judges are drawn.

It’s unclear exactly which Ninth Circuit judge called for an en banc hearing, but in her dissent, Graber urged her colleagues to “swiftly” vacate Monday’s order “before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur.”

A separate Ninth Circuit panel is set to hear oral arguments Wednesday over Trump’s LA deployment. It will consider whether U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer was correct in finding that Trump’s use of troops in the city earlier this year violated a law that largely bars the use of the military in law enforcement.

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wiki 10 25

Ryan D. Nelson - Wikipedia

Ryan Douglas Nelson (born June 23, 1973) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was previously nominated to become Solicitor of the United States Department of the Interior, but was never confirmed.^[1][2]

Early life and education

Nelson earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1996. He then attended BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was lead articles editor of the BYU Law Review. During law school, he was a law clerk for then-Senate Legal Counsel, Thomas B. Griffith, during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1999 and assisted with preparation for Clinton's impeachment trial.^[3] He graduated in 1999 with a Juris Doctor with honors and Order of the Coif membership.

Legal career

After law school, Nelson served as a law clerk for Judge Karen L. Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Richard M. Mosk and Charles N. Brower of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Nelson worked as an associate at Sidley Austin. He argued 13 federal court of appeals cases on environmental and constitutional issues before becoming a judge.^[4]

Nelson previously served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice and as Deputy General Counsel for the Office of Management and Budget. He also served as special counsel for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and as a law clerk for the Senate Legal Counsel.^[4]

From 2009 to 2018, Nelson was General Counsel of Melaleuca, Inc.^[4] In July 2017, he was nominated to be Solicitor of the United States Department of the Interior. In September 2017, Nelson appeared before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His nomination was then placed on the Senate Executive Calendar,^[5] but it was never confirmed by the full Senate.

Federal judicial service

On May 10, 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew Nelson's nomination to be Solicitor of the Department of the Interior^[6] and announced his intent to instead nominate him to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On May 15, 2018, his nomination was sent to the Senate. Nelson was nominated to the seat vacated by Judge N. Randy Smith, who subsequently assumed senior status on August 11, 2018. On July 11, 2018, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[7] On September 13, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote.^[8] On October 11, 2018, the United States Senate confirmed his nomination by a 51–44 vote.^[9] He received his judicial commission on October 18, 2018.^[10]

In 2025, amid deployments of National Guard into cities across the United States by the second Donald Trump administration, Nelson questioned whether the judiciary can restrain the president from deploying the National Guard in this manner.^[11]

Memberships

Nelson has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1997.^[12] He has served as a council member and co-chair of the General Counsel Committee for the American Bar Association Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice since 2012.^[12] Nelson has been a member of the Idaho Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the Eagle Rock Inns of Court since 2010.^[12] He was a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association from 2005 until 2018.^[12]

Personal life

Nelson was born and raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho.^[13] Nelson is married to Barbara Baer and they have seven children.^[13]

lcv

U.S. circuit court judge for the Ninth Circuit. Circuit courts are often the ultimate arbiters of highly significant cases and it is critical that the judges confirmed to serve lifetime appointments on these courts are qualified, non-partisan, and committed to treating parties fairly. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit, the largest circuit court covering nearly three-quarters of the United States’ public lands, serves a crucial role in deciding some of our nation’s most important environmental cases. During his time in the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), Nelson oversaw the legal defense of the President George W. Bush administration’s efforts to benefit polluters and roll back critical environmental protections. This included helping the government argue against regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Massachusetts v. EPA. On July 31, the Senate confirmed Nelson to the Ninth Circuit by a vote of 51-44 (Senate roll call vote 232). NO IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE.

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On May 15, 2018, President Trump nominated Ryan Nelson to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. If confirmed, Nelson will replace JudgeN. Randy Smith, who is scheduled to assume senior status on August 11, 2018.

Based on our review of Nelson’s record, Alliance for Justice opposes his nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Bridget S. Bade - Wikipedia

AFJ

Trump nominated Bridget Bade to the Ninth Circuit in 2018. Prior to her confirmation, Bade served as a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. Her record as a magistrate judge consisted largely of issuing orders, reports, and recommendations. The vast majority of the reports and recommendations deal with procedural issues stemming from cases before district court judges. At the time of her nomination, AFJ wrote, “It is notable for someone to be elevated directly from a magistrate judge position to a circuit court seat.” Since her appointment to the Ninth Circuit, she has joined other Trump judges to fight civil rights and protections for workers and immigrants. She would have upheld a district court ruling that a low-income Walmart employee should pay the company’s legal expenses arising from his age discrimination lawsuit. Bade also dissented from a decision requiring the Bureau of Immigration Appeals to reconsider a Vietnamese asylum-seeker’s testimony about her alleged abuse and sexual assault.

Her record as a Circuit Court judge is no better. Recently, she dissented from a decision to overturn an injunction against ICE relying solely on its own (sometimes faulty) databases to determine whether arrested individuals were American citizens or non-citizens subject to immigration holds. The majority remanded for the lower court to reconsider whether all ICE databases are unreliable, or only some of them. Bade would have made a bad decision even worse by holding that injunctive relief against ICE’s use of faulty databases is a Congressionally-barred remedy, regardless of how unreliable those databases are

The Alliance for Justice strongly opposes the consideration of Bridget Bade for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. Senate confirmed Bade on March 26, 2019, on a vote of 78-21.^[2] Home-state Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D) and Martha McSally (R) of Arizona both voted to confirm Bade. To see a full breakdown of the vote on the official U.S. Senate website, click here.

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AN 10 25

A recent unanimous ruling against one of President Donald Trump's key policies suggests that the Supreme Court may have overplayed its hand, making rebels out of conservative lower court judges.

That's according to Slate legal correspondents Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick, who argued on Monday that last week's 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling preventing Trump from deploying the National Guard in Illinois may have been rooted in animus against how the nation's highest court has treated lower courts. That 7th Circuit ruling upheld a previous ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in which the Trump administration's assertion that calling the guard was necessary to quell a "rebellion" in Chicago failed to convince the court to let him move forward with the deployment. The 3-0 panel even included Trump appointee Amy St. Eve.

Lithwick and Stern observed that the district court stage of litigation is typically seen as the "fact-finding" part of a legal case. And appellate court judges in those respective circuits are usually bound to accept the facts of the district courts unless they were proven to be erroneous.

The experts then pivoted to the Supreme Court's habit during Trump's second term of overturning lower court rulings, often in emergency docket or "shadow docket" rulings that contain no rationale or explanation for their decisions.

"I’m wondering if it was an unforced error by the U.S. Supreme Court to treat lower courts — their findings of fact, their efforts to do hard doctrinal work under unbelievably challenging circumstances — with hostility or overt contempt," Lithwick said. "I find myself wondering if the court, particularly over the summer, made a lot of enemies by using dismissive rhetoric, and now in a lot of ways emboldening judges to say: Not today, Satan. Don’t lie to me."

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Stern agreed, saying: "[W]e are starting to see some conservative judges on the lower courts bristle at the way that the Supreme Court is treating them and their colleagues."

"It seems to me that the Supreme Court has fomented an 'us vs. them' dynamic with the lower courts. It’s presenting itself as the final arbiter of all facts on the ground, ignoring its obligation to defer to what the district court believes is happening in the real world," Stern said. "The Supreme Court has decided: We know everything, we have a crystal ball, we are omnipresent and omnipotent. That arrogance doesn’t just offend the lower courts’ egos — it undercuts the work they see as their duty, especially the careful establishment of facts. So when the Supreme Court treats fact-finding as optional, maybe judges like St. Eve respond by making it decisive. They’re not just fact-checking, they’re reality-checking."

Click here to read Lithwick and Stern's full analysis in Slate (subscription required).

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AN COMM DR 10 25

Top Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller was accused of spreading dangerous “propaganda” Saturday night regarding the federal judge who ruled that the White House could not deploy 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon.

The White House deputy chief of staff accused US District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, of “legal insurrection” after she found that the president’s claims about violent protests at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland were “untethered to facts,” and that residents’ expressions of opposition to ICE do not meet the high legal standard for calling the National Guard.

Miller claimed authorities in Oregon and Portland are aiding “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers” by refusing to aid ICE agents, and claimed Immergut was attempting to assume the role of “commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces” by siding with state officials and issuing a temporary restraining order blocking the National Guard deployment, which was expected to begin this weekend.

Immergut said the state had provided “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days—or even weeks—leading up to the president’s directive.”

Portland residents who oppose Trump’s mass deportation agenda began holding nightly demonstrations at the ICE facility over the summer, with some trying to block vehicles from entering and exiting the property. Crowds have dispersed quickly during the daytime, while at night federal officers have sometimes used tear gas and other weapons to move people away from the building. The Portland police have reported 27 arrests since early June at the protests, and at least two dozen people have been arrested by federal officers.

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While the president has described Portland as “war-ravaged,” Immergut said that the protests fall far below the threshold for ordering federal troops to Portland, which the president has the authority to do only in times of foreign invasion, a rebellion, or when local authorities are unable to maintain order.

“The protests have been such a minor issue that the normal nightlife in downtown Portland has required more police resources than the ICE facility,” said Immergut.

The judge added that the US “has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs... This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of the nation.”

Miller’s accusation that Immergut was taking part in a “legal insurrection” by rejecting Trump’s false claims about the nature of the protests was “reckless,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“It’s authoritarian propaganda, plain and simple. Stephen Miller should be fired,” said the Democrat.

New York Timescolumnist David French added that Miller’s claims put Immergut in potential danger, as right-wing counterprotesters have arrived in Portland in recent days.

Immergut’s temporary order is set to expire in two weeks, but she is expected to rule on the state’s request for a more permanent injunction barring the deployment of the National Guard.

The Trump administration on Saturday night appealed Immergut’s ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled that Trump could send the National Guard to Los Angeles to stop anti-ICE protests after a federal judge had decided that deployment should be halted.

In addition to seeking the National Guard deployment, the administration has reportedly discussed sending the Army’s 82nd Airborne division, which is typically deployed in hostile foreign territory, into Portland.

On Saturday, Miller repeated claims that “there is a large and growing movement of left-wing terrorism in this country” that is “well organized and funded” and ”shielded by far-left Democrat judges.” Immergut is a Republican.

“The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks,” said Miller.

Since the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last month, the president and his allies have insisted that left-wing groups are fomenting violence, with Trump signing an executive order falsely claiming he has the authority to designate “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization”—despite the fact that no “antifa” organization exists.

The president also signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

On Saturday, Miller said on Newsmax that the administration intends to apply NSPM-7 in Portland, initiating investigations into what he called a “domestic terrorist network” whenever federal agents make an arrest at a protest.

Miller, said investigative reporter Jim Stewartson, “collapsed Democrats, ‘far-left Democrat judges’, and ‘antifa’ into a single domestic terror threat as a pretext for mass arrests.”

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AN 10 25

President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a backhanded critique of a federal judge he himself appointed, calling U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden “somewhat liberal” over a ruling in a case involving the White House's ban on the Associated Press (AP).

McFadden, whom Trump nominated in 2017, ruled in April that the White House’s exclusion of AP reporters from certain presidential events violated the First Amendment. He described the administration’s decision to bar the AP from spaces such as the Oval Office and Air Force One as “brazen” and discriminatory.

While speaking to a gathering of senior military officials in Virginia Tuesday, Trump said of his decision to rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America: "I made the change and it went smoothly. We had a couple of fake news outlets that refused to make the change. AP took us to court and we won and the judge, who was a somewhat liberal judge said the name is the Gulf of America."

The remark triggered a wave of commentary on social media about the irony of Trump criticizing a judge of his own choosing.

The president's choice of descriptor immediately provoked reactions online. Many journalists, pundits and observers pointed out the stark incongruity: He is criticizing a judge he installed, and one who previously served in his Department of Justice and clerked for a Republican-appointed federal appellate judge.

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Josh Gerstein, Legal Affairs reporter at Politico, wrote on the social platformX on Wednesday: "OVERLOOKED: Trump praised judge/his ruling in case over AP being kicked out of White House pool. Called Judge Trevor McFadden (his own appointee, Trump DOJ atty, Colloton clerk) 'somewhat liberal.' McFadden found WH 'brazen' move violated AP's 1A rights."

Kyle Cheney, another Politico reporter, wrote: "Trump literally got everything about this wrong: McFadden ruled *against* him, is his own appointee, and never said anything approaching this."

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an 9 25

A judge appointed by President Donald Trump handed him a devastating blow Thursday when he blocked the Trump administration from deporting over 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children who entered the United States and were placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, reports Newsweek.

While Trump officials argued that their intention was to reunite children, ages 10-17, with parents who supposedly wanted them returned home over Labor Day weekend, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia, appointed to the federal bench in 2017 by Trump during his first term, wasn't buying it.

"But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later," he wrote. "There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return."

Although a temporary order had already been preventing the removal of the children, the order was set to expire Tuesday and Kelly granted a preliminary injunction extending their protection indefinitely.

While the judge preserved safeguards for Guatemalan children, he declined to broaden the ruling to cover minors fromother countries, Newsweek explains, but did say that any attempt to remove those children in a similar manner "would likely be unlawful."

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not a win yet?

an 8 25

President Donald Trump's administration is having a difficult time defending the legality of its policies — even to judges Trump himself put on the bench.

Politico reported Monday that U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia during the first year of his first term, wasn't buying the administration's argument in favor of withholding congressionally appropriated funds for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Politico correspondents Katherine Tully-McManus and Kyle Cheney called Friedrich's Monday ruling "one of the most significant benchmarks in the legal response to the Trump administration’s effort to test the president’s power to withhold congressionally approved funds."

White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought claimed that the administration's refusal to disburse the $315 million appropriation for NED was legally justified by not only saying the administration had the right to hold onto money that wasn't lined up with the president's priorities, but that it was also in the best interest of NED.

"The defendants’ official justification for that withholding — preserving the Endowment’s funding stability for the coming year — is not plausible," Friedrich wrote in her ruling, while also slamming "repeated maneuvers to impede the Endowment’s flow of funds."

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NED — which focuses on promoting democratic ideals overseas – has typically had access to its full amount of funding since it was established in 1982 under then-President Ronald Reagan's administration. However, after Trump took office in January, NED became a casualty of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which rampaged through multiple federal agencies, fired thousands of workers and axed billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts.

Previously, NED had pursued litigation to gain access to its full congressional appropriation, though its efforts were somewhat curtailed after the Trump administration relented and released most of its money. However, NED's legal efforts continued after the administration continued to justify freezing the disbursement of millions of dollars designated as "no-year" funds, meaning there was no deadline attached to when they had to be spent.

Congress banned presidents from singlehandedly refusing to disburse money passed in appropriations bills with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and Politico reported that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the administration had violated the act on five different occasions since his second term began. Vought complained in a May social media post that Trump critics were "going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt."

Click here to read Politico's full report in its entirety.

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06/10/2025 RWW

Kyle Mantyla

Nina Golgowski @ HuffPost: Latinas For Trump Co-Founder Rips Trump Immigration Policies As ‘Unacceptable And Inhumane’

“This is not what we voted for," said Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R), while accusing Trump of undermining “the sense of fairness and justice.”

Gabe Ortiz @ Combating Natavist Narratives: Stephen Miller’s Brutal Obsessions Are On Full Display In Workplaces, Courthouses, and Neighborhoods

The mass deportation architect-in-chief's lifelong, maniacal preoccupation with vilifying immigrants has reached new autocratic heights.

Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: An Oklahoma City employee moonlights as a pastor who preaches death for LGBTQ people

During the work week, Dillon Awes secures city data. But at the church he runs, he has a history of despicable sermons.

Jessica Mason Pieklo @ Rewire: Trump Wants These Two ‘Culture Warriors’ to Be Federal Judges

If confirmed for lifetime appointments, Whitney Hermandorfer and Josh Divine could be more loyal to the president than they are to the U.S. Constitution.

Molly Olmstead @ Slate: Why Conservatives Are Calling Each Other “Woke” Now

Here we have a fight between those who are concerned about the radicalization of young white men, and those who see it as an asset.

Anna Merlan @ Mother Jones: The Head of a New RFK-Backing Group Promoted 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Leland Lehrman is a key figure in the MAHA world, despite decades of pushing extremist ideas.

Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies

Trump made 46 nominations for federal judgeships that were not confirmed by the Senate. Of these, 6 were withdrawn by President Trump, 32 expired at an adjournment of the Senate, and 8 were withdrawn by President Joe Biden after he took office....

As of February 3, 2020, the American Bar Association (ABA) had rated 220 of Trump's nominees. Of these nominees, 187 were rated "well-qualified," 67 were rated "qualified," and 10 were rated "not qualified."^[10] Seven of the nine individuals rated as "not qualified" were confirmed by the Senate.^[11]

According to Vox's Ian Millhiser, "There’s no completely objective way to measure legal ability, but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship, including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court. Approximately 40 percent of Trump’s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and about 80 percent clerked on a federal court of appeals. That compares to less than a quarter of Obama’s nominees who clerked on the Supreme Court, and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship. In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees."^[12] As of July 2020, the judges appointed by Trump are "85% white and 76% male; less than 5% are African-American,” as a result of which the federal judiciary has become "less diverse" compared to previous administrations, according to an analysis by The Conversation.^[13]

Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

5th circuit withdrawn then got thru?

Cory T. Wilson - Wikipedia

...In December 2018, Wilson was appointed to the Mississippi Court of Appeals to the seat vacated by Kenny Griffis, who was elevated to the Mississippi Supreme Court.^[6] He was sworn into office on February 15, 2019.^[7] His service as a state judge ended on July 2, 2020, when he was elevated as a Circuit Judge to the Fifth Circuit Court.^[8]

Federal judicial service

Withdrawn nomination to district court

On August 28, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Wilson to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. On October 15, his nomination was sent to the Senate. President Trump nominated Wilson to the seat vacated by Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who assumed senior status on March 23, 2018.^[9] On January 3, 2020, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.^[10] On January 6, 2020, his renomination was sent to the Senate.^[11] On January 8, 2020, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on his nomination.^[12]

During his confirmation hearing, some senators asked about Wilson's past comments on social media about President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as his previous positions, as a state legislator, on abortion, LGBT rights, the Affordable Care Act,^[13][14] and voting rights.^[15]

His district-court nomination—which stalled as the first impeachment trial of President Trump was consuming the Senate and as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning^[16]—was withdrawn on May 4, 2020, when he was nominated to the Fifth Circuit.^[8]

Court of appeals service

On March 30, 2020, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Wilson to serve as a United States circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to fill the seat vacated by Judge E. Grady Jolly, who assumed senior status on October 3, 2017.^[17]

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the-truth-about-trumps-judges

...

For example, one nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Matthew Petersen, was so inexperienced that he could not answer basic questions about legal procedure. During his confirmation hearing, after admitting that he had never tried a case or even argued a motion in state or federal court, he could not define a motionin limine, a motion frequently used at pre-trial hearings and during trial in both state and federal courts. Petersen eventually removed himself from consideration for the judgeship, but the White House stood by him even after that, accusing opponents of distracting from the president’s “record-setting success” on judges.

Sadly, this is the record Trump has set on judges: he has nominated the highest number of individuals who the non-partisan American Bar Association (ABA)’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary found to be not qualified because of their lack of relevant legal and judicial experience. Nine of Trump’s picks received this Not Qualified rating — a record indeed, but not the kind anyone should want to boast about.

One such nominee, now judge, Lawrence VanDyke, had numerous people report to the ABA that they were concerned about his temperament, as reported to the Senate. One interviewee said that “Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” They felt that he “lacks humility, has an ‘entitlement’ temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful.” Despite this ominous warning, which should disqualify anyone from a job where fair-minded honesty is a necessity, McConnell and Senate Republicans were pleased to hand VanDyke a lifetime seat on a powerful appeals court.

Other nominees’ quotes speak for themselves. One of Trump’s picks, Jeff Mateer, attacked transgender youth, calling innocent children examples of “how Satan’s plan is working.” His nomination was eventually withdrawn, but not before Senate Republicans called him a “principled” man who would “serve Texans well on the bench.”

And then there was Brett Talley, a nominee to a district court in Alabama, whose nomination was eventually withdrawn as well. Talley, who never tried a case, became well-known for headlines like “Trump Judicial Nominee Brett Talley Appears to Have Defended ‘the First KKK’ in Message Board Post” and “Law Clerk by Day, Ghost Hunter by Night, Now Trump’s Judiciary Nominee.”

...

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Category:United States district court judges appointed by Donald Trump - Wikipedia

5 25

Fernando Aenlle-Rocha

Alan Albright

Rossie D. Alston Jr.

Roy Altman

Raúl M. Arias-Marxuach

Barry Ashe

Charles E. Atchley Jr.

Annemarie Axon

John Badalamenti

R. Stan Baker

Thomas Barber (judge)

J. Campbell Barker

Pamela Barker

David Barlow (judge)

Susan Paradise Baxter

Benjamin Beaton

Jeff Beaverstock

Kenneth D. Bell

Wendy Berger

Stanley Blumenfeld

Claria Horn Boom

J. P. Boulee

Holly A. Brady

Nancy E. Brasel

Andrew L. Brasher

Susan Brnovich

John W. Broomes

Ada Brown (judge)

Gary R. Brown

Jeff Brown (judge)

Michael Lawrence Brown

Brian C. Buescher

Liles C. Burke

James D. Cain Jr.

J. Philip Calabrese

William L. Campbell Jr.

Aileen Cannon

Silvia Carreño-Coll

Stephen R. Clark

Donald C. Coggins Jr.

Douglas R. Cole

Robert J. Colville

Colm Connolly

Clifton L. Corker

David Counts

John P. Cronan

Toby Crouse

Katherine A. Crytzer

Thomas T. Cullen

Stephanie D. Davis

Joseph Dawson III

Jodi W. Dishman

Daniel D. Domenico

Kari A. Dooley

Terry A. Doughty

David W. Dugan

Charles R. Eskridge III

Dabney Friedrich

John M. Gallagher

Stephanie A. Gallagher

Charles Barnes Goodwin

Steven D. Grimberg

Greg G. Guidry

Diane Gujarati

Stephanie L. Haines

Philip M. Halpern

J. P. Hanlon

W. Scott Hardy

John F. Heil III

James Wesley Hendrix

John C. Hinderaker

John W. Holcomb

Marilyn Horan

R. Austin Huffaker Jr.

Karin Immergut

Hala Y. Jarbou

Rebecca Grady Jennings

Kristi Haskins Johnson

Iain D. Johnston

Bernard M. Jones

Sean D. Jordan

David C. Joseph

Michael J. Juneau

William F. Jung

Matthew Kacsmaryk

Timothy J. Kelly

Chad F. Kenney

Jeremy Kernodle

Joshua Kindred

Tom Kleeh

James R. Knepp II

John F. Kness

Eric R. Komitee

Rachel Kovner

Dominic W. Lanza

Damon R. Leichty

Michael T. Liburdi

Lewis J. Liman

Brett H. Ludwig

Sherri Lydon

Anna M. Manasco

Emily C. Marks

Karen S. Marston

Corey L. Maze

Mary S. McElroy

Trevor N. McFadden

Matthew W. McFarland

Stephen P. McGlynn

Taylor B. McNeel

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle

Robert A. Molloy

Terry F. Moorer

David S. Morales

Sarah D. Morrison

Richard E. Myers II

Michael J. Newman

Carl J. Nichols

Howard C. Nielson Jr.

Maryellen Noreika

Mark Norris (judge)

David J. Novak

David Nye (judge)

Jill Otake

Martha M. Pacold

Scott L. Palk

Tommy Parker (judge)

Peter J. Phipps

Sarah Pitlyk

Mark T. Pittman

Jason K. Pulliam

A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr.

Nicholas Ranjan

Scott H. Rash

William M. Ray II

Eli J. Richardson

Kea W. Riggs

Todd W. Robinson

Fernando Rodriguez Jr.

Mary M. Rowland

Lee Rudofsky

Rodolfo Ruiz

Mark C. Scarsi

Matthew T. Schelp

Karen Gren Scholer

Steven C. Seeger

Tripp Self

John Sinatra

Raag Singhal

Rodney Smith (judge)

Brantley Starr

William S. Stickman IV

Robert R. Summerhays

James R. Sweeney II

Holly Teeter

Drew B. Tipton

Eric C. Tostrud

Daniel M. Traynor

Michael J. Truncale

Franklin U. Valderrama

Wendy Vitter

Frank W. Volk

Mary Kay Vyskocil

Justin R. Walker

Lance E. Walker

Peter D. Welte

T. Kent Wetherell II

Christy C. Wiegand

Robert E. Wier

C. J. Williams (judge)

Jennifer P. Wilson

Allen Winsor

Joshua Wolson

Patrick Wyrick

Roderick C. Young

John Milton Younge

Categories: United States federal judges appointed by Donald TrumpUnited States district court judges by appointing president

Hidden categories: Template Category TOC via Automatic category TOC on category with 101–200 pagesAutomatic category TOC generates standard Category TOC

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tfg

Corey L. Maze - Wikipedia fedsoc

From 2011 to 2019, Maze served as chief of the Attorney General's Special Litigation unit and acted as the state's primary counsel in complex civil matters such as the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the ongoing opioid crisis.^[2]

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Wendy Berger - Wikipedia

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Washington, April 23, 2018

Tags: Civil and Voting Rights , Judicial Nominations

A letter to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urging the Senate to reject the appointment of Stuart Kyle Duncan to the federal bench.

LSU

Kyle Duncan (judge) - Wikipedia

While he was a judge on the Fifth Circuit, Duncan refused to identify a transgender defendant by their assumed name and preferred gender pronouns. Duncan noted, "Congress has said nothing to prohibit courts from referring to litigants according to their biological sex, rather than according to their subjective gender identity".^[22][23]

Stanford Law School protest

On March 9, 2023, Duncan arrived to Stanford Law School in order to participate in a discussion on "Guns, Covid and Twitter," having been invited by the university's Federalist Society chapter. The event became a cause célèbre, and was marked by protests led by the student coalition Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) after a request for his speech to be canceled was denied.^[24] According to The Stanford Daily, "Throughout Duncan’s speech, student protesters booed and made various loud comments, frequently drowning out his voice. In fliers put up in advance of the event, protesters called Duncan a right-wing advocate for laws that would harm women, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people." After ten minutes of protests had occurred, Duncan, according to David Lat writing in the Original Jurisdiction, “became angry, departed from his prepared remarks, and laced into the hecklers.”^[25] On March 11, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law dean Jennifer Martínez issued a letter of apology to Duncan, writing that students may "exercise their right to protest but not to disrupt the proceedings.”^[26]

Notable cases...

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Stephanie Haines - Ballotpedia

united States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (2019)

On March 5, 2019, President Donald Trump (R) nominated Haines to a seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Haines on September 11, 2019.^[1] To read more about the federal nominations process, click here.

Nomination Tracker

Nominee Information
Name: Stephanie L. Haines
Court: United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
Progress
Confirmed 190 days after nomination.
Nominated: March 5, 2019
ABA Rating: Substantial majority qualified/minority well qualified
Questionnaire: Questionnaire
Hearing: April 10, 2019

QFRs: QFRs (Hover over QFRs to read more)

Reported: May 9, 2019
Confirmed: September 11, 2019
Vote: 94-0

Confirmation vote

The U.S. Senate confirmed Haines on September 11, 2019, on a vote of 94-0.

...haines was confirmed to a U.S. District Court under a new precedent the Senate established.

On April 3, 2019, the U.S. Senate voted 51-48 in favor of a change to chamber precedent lowering the maximum time allowed for debate on executive nominees to posts below the Cabinet level and on nominees to district court judgeships from 30 hours after invoking cloture to two.^[4]

The change was passed under a procedure, often referred to as the nuclear option, that requires 51 votes rather than 60.^[5]

It was the third use of the nuclear option in Senate history. In 2013, it was used to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to confirm presidential nominees, except those to the Supreme Court. In 2017, it was used to eliminate the 60-vote threshold required to confirm Supreme Court nominees.^[6] For more, see Filibuster and reconciliation in the United States Congress.

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Haines' nomination on April 10, 2019.^[7] Haines was reported to the full Senate on May 9, 2019, on a 21-1 committee vote. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) voted against forwarding Haines' nomination.^[8]

Nomination

On March 1, 2019, President Donald Trump (R) announced his intent to nominate Haines to the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.^[3] The U.S. Senate officially received the nomination on March 5, 2019. Haines was nominated to succeed Judge David Cercone, who assumed senior status on November 24, 2017.^[1]

The American Bar Association rated Haines qualified by a substantial majority and well qualified by a minority for the position.^[9] To read more about ABA ratings, click here.

Early life and education

Haines was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1969. She obtained a B.A. from Juniata College in 1992 and a J.D. from Ohio Northern University College of Law in 1995.^[3][10]

Military service

Haines was a prosecutor and defense appellate specialist of the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. At the time of her federal judicial nomination, Haines was a reserve member of the United States Air Force JAG Corps.^[3]

Professional career

2019-present: Judge, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
2007-2019: Assistant United States attorney, Western District of Pennsylvania
2002-2007: Assistant United States attorney, Southern District of West Virginia^[3][10]

Awards

2015: Law Enforcement Agency Directors (LEAD) of Western Pennsylvania Award
2015: LEAD of Western Pennsylvania Team Award
2010: Social Security Administration Philadelphia Regional Anti-Fraud Award^[10]

Haines received the following military awards:

2016: Meritorious Service Medal
2015: Armed Forces Reserve Medal
2011: Air Force Outstanding Unit Award
2008: Air Force Commendation Medal
2005: National Defense Service Medal
2005: Global War on Terror Service Medal
2005: West Virginia Service Ribbon
2002: Meritorious Service Medal
1999: Army Commendation Medal
1999: Army Achievement Medal
1997: Army Air Assault Badge
1996: Army Service Ribbon^[10]

About the court

Western District of Pennsylvania
Third Circuit

Judgeships
Posts: 10
Judges: 10
Vacancies: 0
Judges
Chief: Mark Raymond Hornak
Active judges: Susan Baxter, Cathy Bissoon, Robert J. Colville, Stephanie Haines, William Scott Hardy, Marilyn J. Horan, Mark Raymond Hornak, J. Nicholas Ranjan, William Shaw Stickman IV, Christy Wiegand Senior judges: David Cercone, Joy Conti, Nora Fischer, Kim Gibson, Arthur Schwab

The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania is one of 94 United States district courts.

When decisions of the court are appealed, they are appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit based in downtown Philadelphia at the James Byrne Courthouse.

The Western District of Pennsylvania has original jurisdiction over cases filed within its jurisdiction. These cases can include civil and criminal matters that fall under federal law.

The geographic jurisdiction of the Western District of Pennsylvania consists of all the following counties in the western part of the state of Pennsylvania.

To read opinions published by this court, click here.

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A federal judge's ruling in Pennsylvania on Tuesday marked the first time a court has decided the Trump administration can invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, and one policy expert said the ruling "further pressures the Supreme Court to act soon" to determine once and for all whether the mass deportation campaign is lawful.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines, an appointee of President Donald Trump in the Western District of Pennsylvania, contrasted with those of federal judges in Colorado, New York, and Texas, who have found Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act exceeds its scope.

The law enables the government to swiftly deport migrants during an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" by a foreign nation. The Trump administration has claimed the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua has ties to the South American country's government—an assertion that U.S. intelligence agencies have not endorsed—and has designated the group a foreign terrorist organization.

Having invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March, Trump has deported more than a hundred Venezuelans accused of being members of the gang to El Salvador.

Haines said in her ruling that she hadn't resolved whether the administration can use the law to remove gang members from the country, and rejected a request by the White House to find that an invasion or predatory incursion could include migration.

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But she also disagreed with other courts' rulings that found the Alien Enemies Act relates specifically to military invasions, saying instead that it covers "acts by a foreign terrorist organization."

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said her reasoning was "exceptionally weak."

"Her decision, which applies only in the Western District of Pennsylvania, will be appealed to the 3rd Circuit, which will likely put a hold on [Alien Enemies Act] removals out of her district," said Reichlin-Melnick. "But this further pressures the Supreme Court to act soon—potentially before the end of the term."

Reichlin-Melnick and others emphasized that Haines ordered the administration to give migrants far more notice of their impending deportations under the law. The White House had proposed 12-24 hours; Haines ordered officials to provide 21 days' notice in both Spanish and English.

The ACLU last month called on the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act.

The justices ruled last month that people targeted for removal under the law are entitled to challenge their removal, without providing a timeline.

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4TH DISTR? TRUMP JUDGE ORDER RET OF 2ND CECOT

omfg

1 25 an

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling temporarily blocking the release of Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's final report in the waning days of President Joe Biden's administration.

The three-page order prevents Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Biden DOJ and "all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice.” But as Politico's Kyle Cheney reports, Cannon — who then-President Donald Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2020 — may not have the jurisdiction to intervene in the publication of the report, which is required by the federal special counsel statute.

Whether the report sees the light of day will ultimately rest with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has overturned Cannon's rulings on two previous occasions. Legal nonprofit National Security Counselors posted to Bluesky that the 11th Circuit, which meets next week, is not likely to go agree with Cannon's decision.

"[T]hey get the final say, and they're not going to play the delay game that Trump really wanted Cannon to play," the organization wrote.

Portland, Oregon-based attorney Patrick De Klotz observed that Cannon's decision was handed down right around the same time the president-elect praised the judge as "brilliant" during a Tuesday press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate. And civil rights lawyer Subodh Chandra condemned Cannon for "aiding and abetting suppression of the truth," adding: "Shame. Shame. Shame."

Other legal experts speculated that Cannon's move was less about the report itself and more about her jockeying for a position on the Supreme Court. Attorney Jeffrey Evan Gold, who is a legal analyst for CNN, NBC, ABC and others, responded to the news of Cannon blocking the report's release by referring to her as "Justice Cannon." Northeastern Illinois University political science professor William Adler wrote that Americans should "get used to" saying "Supreme Court nominee Aileen Cannon." And Politico magazine contributor Joshua Zeitz opined that it was "pretty easy to see how this goes."

"Alito will retire, Trump will name her to the court, and she’ll easily be confirmed with unanimous GOP support and a handful of older Democratic Senators who think it’s still 1978," Zeitz wrote.

Click here to read Cheney's full report in Politico, and click here to read the full text of Cannon's order.

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Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.

The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.

Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.

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TRUMP ADMIN SUED OVER 100X ON xo ETC, EVEN TRUMP APPT RULE AGAINST AROUND 805?

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AN 4 25

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump's administration suffered a loss in court — this time, at the hands of one of his own appointed judges.

Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney tweeted Tuesday that U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy, who Trump appointed to the District of Rhode Island in 2019, authored a ruling that overruled his funding freeze for multiple federal agencies. In her 63-page ruling, McElroy granted a preliminary injunction in favor of a coalition of nonprofit organizations suing the Trump administration allowing them to have their funding turned back on while litigation plays out.

"The judiciary does not and cannot decide whether [Trump's] policies are sound," she wrote. "But where the federal courts are constitutionally required to weigh in — meaning we, by law, have no choice but to do so — are cases 'about the procedure' (or lack thereof) that the Government follows in trying to enact those policies."

McElroy said the plaintiffs correctly sued the administration under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), under an argument that federal money already appropriated by Congress during former President Joe Biden's administration by law had to go to its designated payees. She noted that while "elections have consequences" and administrations have a right to implement their own policies, they don't have the right to shut off money after Congress put it in legislation that was signed into law.

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"Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a President’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration," she wrote.

The Trump-appointed judge additionally quoted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, saying he "put it best" when he wrote: "Justice [Oliver Wendell] Holmes famously wrote that 'men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.' But it is also true, particularly when so much is at stake, that the Government should turn square corners in dealing with the people."

"Here, the Government failed to do so," McElroy wrote in her ruling.

Click here to read Judge McElroy's full ruling.

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not trump judge but all GOP

yikes an 12 24

'Totally unfounded': Legal experts blast GA appeals court’s disqualification of Fani Willis

fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is now officially disqualified from prosecuting President-elect Donald Trump in his Georgia election interference criminal case, following a Thursday decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals (COA).

As NPR reported, the three-judge panel — all of whom were appointed by Republican governors — ruled that Willis' relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade amounted to a conflict of interest that required her being removed from the case. Assuming she doesn't accept the court's decision, the matter will now go to the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia (PACGA), according to Georgia criminal defense attorney Andrew Fleischman. However, Fleischman said this likely means' Willis case is "100% dead," as the PACGA "declined to prosecute the one recused case it already got."

In a subsequent skeet (the term used for Bluesky posts), Fleischman opined that there was a "total lack of analysis" in the COA's decision, saying there was "no rule or explanation here that any other criminal defendant could possibly use in their own case" and that "in such an important case, the court should explain itself."

Rolling Stone reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez posted excerpts of **the dissent authored by Judge Ben Land (appointed by Governor Brian Kemp). He argued that attorneys representing Trump "failed to show that the district attorney had an actual conflict of interest, failed to show that she received any material financial benefit as a result of her relationship with Nathan Wade, failed to show that she had a personal stake in the conviction of any defendant, failed to show that her relationship with Wade involved any impropriety on her part, and failed to show that their relationship, including their financial arrangements, had any actual impact on the case."

"Because there was some evidence presented to the trial court that supported these findings, we are bound to accept them," Land continued. "The majority does not dispute these findings. Rather, it holds, with the citation of no supporting authority and apparently for the first time in the history of our state, that the mere existence of an appearance of impropriety, in and of itself, is sufficient to reverse the trial court's refusal to disqualify the district attorney and her entire office."

Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen wrote that the COA's ruling was "totally unfounded," and noted that "bipartisan experts agree" that Willis' relationship with Wade wasn't disqualifying on its own. But he added that despite Willis' removal from the case, "the indictment stands" and should be pursued "vigorously." Eisen reminded his followers that —just as in the New York hush money cover-up case — the Georgia indictment is not subject to the Supreme Court's immunity protections for official presidential acts.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance pointed out that the decision means "a new DA will be selected to take over the case," adding that this would likely amount to "a slow death knell if not an outright death for the case." In his own response to the ruling, Federation of American Scientists director of global risk Jon B. Wolfsthal lamented: "The entire American system of justice is broken." Attorney Bradley P. Moss, however, wrote that Willis "has no one to blame but herself" for her disqualification.

READ MORE:[Fani Willis in testy exchange: I'm not the one 'on trial for trying to steal an election'

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Trump appointee Judge Cannon’s latest move amounts to an 'indefinite trial delay': expert - Alternet.org

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3 24 msnbc judge ho wife/ho took money from ADF while he was ruling on them

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h cox richardson

explainers only on FB?

Short Explainer: Thinking About the U.S. Economy new deal invest in ppl, social safety net, regulate biz, provide infra --> grow economy; tax brackets; reverse 1981 waste of money, more effic for rich ppl to guide economy, trickle down; gop said 1981 to 2021, but moved 50 trillion from bottom 90% to top 1%; Biden reverse bc ppl do not believe in democ; am rescue plan saved small biz; infrastructure, support labor, CHIPS sci act; bot 80% workers wages grew faster than inflation; trump had to lie about economy to reverse biden reversal; musk 330 B superpac neg ads, neoliberal supply side on steroids; goes after VA benefits; overtime pay 35 to 50k trump appt judge

?v=2372579999745798

?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v&ref=watch_permalink&v=8412125038916668 11 min

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an 3 24

Earlier this week, CNN reported that the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a new rule that would that would shut down "judge shopping" — a tactic conservative attorneys general and conservative litigants have used to file challenges against liberal policies and laws.

The new policy requires federal district courts to "randomly assign a judge to a lawsuit if the suit aims to block any federal or state law, executive order or regulation," the Hill reports.

"I’m really proud that we did this," 6th Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton said in response to the announcement.

However, according to the Associated Press, two days later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) condemned the move "on the Senate floor and joined with two other GOP senators to send letters to a dozen chief judges around the country suggesting they" ignore it.

In a Sunday, March 17 op-ed published by MSNBC, University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck points out the hypocrisy in not only McConnell's — but US Senator John Cornyn's (R-TX) and Thom Tillis' (R-NC) — opposition to the rule, too.

"So why are these three Republican senators so upset by the proposed reform?" Vladeck asks. "The answer is obvious: because it will make it harder to guarantee that specific judges will hear specific lawsuits — whether individual Republican appointees hearing challenges to Democratic policies, or vice versa."

Vladeck writes:

Plaintiffs have increasingly taken advantage of these 'single-judge' divisions to steer nationwide federal policy challenges to specific, ideologically sympathetic judges. For example, the nationwide challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone (one of two drugs used in the most common and safest abortion procedure) was filed in Amarillo, Texas — not a courthouse with any specific connection to mifepristone, but one in which it had a 100% chance of being assigned to a certain Trump-appointed district judge, former anti-abortion advocate Matthew Kacsmaryk. Kacsmaryk remarkably, if predictably, ruled against the FDA’s approval of the drug — an approval that occurred 23 years ago.

Another example the Just Security blog co-founder notes:

A nationwide challenge to Biden administration efforts to combat social media disinformation was filed in Monroe, Louisiana — where it had a 100% chance of being assigned to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty. And the state of Texas, which has filed 37 different lawsuits in Texas district courts challenging Biden administration policies*, has filed a majority of them in single-judge divisions — and none in Austin (where the Texas government is actually located) or Houston or Dallas or … you get the point.

Vladeck emphasizes, "The charge from McConnell, Cornyn and Tillis that the Judicial Conference is engaged in 'partisan' behavior rings more than a little hypocritical. The whole point of the proposal is to reduce the appearance of partisanship on the part of the federal courts."

READ MORE:[GOP represents 'most significant threat to basic constitutionalism since Civil War': historian

*Vladeck's full op-ed is available [at this link.]

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CLIMATEWIRE | In a win for local governments suing oil and gas majors over climate change, a federal appeals court Wednesday became the seventh to reject the industry’s bid to move a lawsuit to federal court.

In a unanimous ruling, three judges with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state of Connecticut, upholding a lower court decision that said the state’s lawsuit against Exxon Mobil should be heard in state court.

In a twist, the decision was written by Judge Richard Sullivan, who wrote a 2021 decision for the appeals court that found that New York City’s claims in a climate lawsuit were preempted by federal law.

The industry has relied on the 2021 ruling to argue that it represents a split among the courts. An industry attorney cited it as recently as Tuesday in an effort to get a similar case in Delaware dismissed.

But Sullivan, who called the Connecticut and New York lawsuits “very different” in oral arguments last September, noted in Wednesday’s opinion that the court was joining its sister circuits in rejecting the company’s request to move the cases.

Connecticut’s lawsuit is one of more than two dozen filed by municipalities that accuse the industry of lying to the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels. The industry has sought to move the cases to federal court where producers believe they have a better chance to toss the cases under the Clean Air Act.

But Sullivan wrote that the Connecticut case presents a “total mismatch” between the business practices that Exxon Mobil argued were subject to federal control and the behavior that Connecticut is challenging.

Connecticut’s claims, Sullivan wrote, “ultimately concern neither extracting oil and gas nor burning them, but talking about what happens to the environment when they are burned.”

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D), who filed the case in 2020, welcomed the decision and said his office is ready to “aggressively prosecute” the lawsuit in state court.

“Our case is simple and strong — Exxon Mobil amassed billions of dollars in profits off a decadeslong campaign of lies, and they must be held accountable,” Tong said.

He called the case a “straightforward consumer deception case” and said it was built on the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, which was argued in cases involving the tobacco and opioid industries.

The industry said the decision “misses” the real issue.

“The nature of climate change, this whole litigation and the remedies that Connecticut and other jurisdictions seek are all beyond the scope of any state law,” said Phil Goldberg, special counsel to the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, an initiative of the National Association of Manufacturers.

He argued that determining how best to address climate change is a “major national and international priority that cannot be decided piecemeal by state judges based on which companies each state or locality decides to sue.”

Sullivan, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote that the Supreme Court has cautioned that judges should “be reluctant” to find the authority that “converts an ordinary state common law complaint into one stating a federal claim.”

And he added that the judges were “wholly unpersuaded by Exxon Mobil’s efforts to push the boundaries of the exceptions” it claimed.

He said the judges agreed with the lower court decision that found Connecticut accuses Exxon Mobil of lying to the state’s consumers and the “fact that the alleged lies were about the impacts of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate is immaterial.”

He noted that the sides “vigorously dispute” whether federal pollution law is at play in the case. But he added the allegation that Exxon Mobil’s statements ran afoul of Connecticut’s “truth in advertising” laws, “have absolutely nothing to do with the federal common law of transboundary pollution.”

The company had argued the case should be heard in federal court because it leases oil drilling sites from the federal government and is subject to “myriad” federal regulations.

But the court was not convinced, with Sullivan writing that “Exxon Mobil has made this very argument to five of our sister circuits, all of which have squarely rejected it. We find their reasoning persuasive, and we now join them.”

Sullivan wrote that Exxon Mobil had argued the federal government had “significant control” over the means of oil and gas production during World War II.

“But World War II ended in 1945,” he wrote, adding that the conduct Connecticut cites dates to no earlier than the 1950s. “We are aware of no authority for the proposition that once a private company has acted under the close supervision of the federal government for some discrete period in its history, it may claim ‘acting-under’ status for the rest of time.”

He was joined in the case by Judge William Nardini, another Trump appointee, and Judge Myrna Pérez, an appointee of President Joe Biden.

The ruling comes as the Supreme Court earlier this year boosted a raft of similar cases by rejecting the oil industry’s latest efforts to derail them. Those rulings could pave the way for a flood of lawsuits against the industry to be heard in state courts from Maryland to Hawaii.

California earlier this month became the eighth and largest state to file a climate deception lawsuit.

The state of Delaware defended its lawsuit against the industry Tuesday in a three-hour hearing before Superior Court Judge Mary Miller Johnston.

Ted Boutrous, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who represents Chevron in a number of the climate liability cases, raised Sullivan’s 2021 opinion in the New York case, telling Johnston it “provides a road map” for her court and that federal law should govern the case.

He noted Delaware argues that the cases are different, but he insisted the cases contained “the very same allegations.”

Victor Sher of the law firm Sher Edling, who represented the state, said the New York lawsuit was based on a different liability standard.

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an 8 23

united States District Court Judge Brantley Starr of the Northern District of Texas on Monday ordered three Southwest Airlines attorneys to attend "religious-liberty training" through the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Starr was nominated by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and confirmed to the federal bench in a 51-39 party-line vote by the then-Republican-controlled Senate.

StarR wrote that "the airline twisted his words and disregarded his order in the case of a flight attendant who claimed that she was fired for expressing her opposition to abortion," reports David Koenig of the Associated Press. "Starr found Southwest in contempt for the way it explained the case to flight attendants last year after losing a jury verdict. In a blistering 29-page order, the judge said the airline acted as if its own policy limiting what employees can say is more important than a federal law protecting religious speech."

Koenig notes that "for Southwest, the sanctions add insult to injury. They stem from a roughly $800,000 judgment against the airline and the flight attendant's union. Although that was less than the jury's $5.1 million award, Charlene Carter also got her job back."

Carter had "sued Southwest for firing her in 2017 after she sent confrontational anti-abortion messages to her union’s former president. Carter argued she had been discriminated against based on her religious beliefs," writes The New Republic's Tori Otten.

In his latest decision, Otten continues, "Starr specifically mandated the lawyers take the training as part of court-ordered sanctions for religious discrimination. He described ADF as one of several 'esteemed non-profit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.'"

Starr "also ordered Southwest to issue a statement telling its employees that the airline 'may not' engage in religious discrimination against them. Instead, Southwest said that it 'does not' do so, prompting Carter to demand additional sanctions against the company," Otten explains.

Otten also adds that "Carter had made no request for Southwest to undergo religious liberty training. ADF is not representing Carter, nor is it otherwise related to the case at all, so it's unclear why Starr felt the need to involve the group.

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an tex trib 8 23

How the Texas AG’s office became a pipeline for conservative federal judges

María Méndezand The Texas TribuneAugust 08, 2023

How the Texas AG’s office became a pipeline for conservative federal judges" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

The Texas attorney general’s office is often in headlines representing a conservative voice in legal fights over health care, abortion and immigration — and more recently, regarding suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment.

But it was once a quiet state agency that mostly collected child support and defended the state in bureaucratic lawsuits.

Over the course of more than two decades, the office has become a well-known champion of a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and a pipeline for conservative federal judges. Nine federal judges appointed by former President Donald Trump had worked in the Texas attorney general’s office beginning in 1999, according to a Texas Tribune review of the office’s recent history.

These judges have been key in deciding cases in favor of conservatives on a wide range of issues, including abortion, COVID-19 vaccine requirements and immigration policies, through the framework of constitutional originalism. This framework argues that judges should rely solely on the text of the nation’s founding documents, and how it was publicly understood at the time of their writing, to answer essential questions about applying the law to modern life.

Here’s a timeline of how the office transformed under the leadership of now high-profile Republicans Sen. John Cornyn, Gov. Greg Abbott and Paxton. For an in-depth history of the office, you can read the Tribune’s three-part series here.

1998: John Cornyn elected attorney general

John Cornyn became the first Republican to win an election to the Texas attorney general’s office since the Reconstruction era of the late 1800s. He left his seat on the Texas Supreme Court for the role.

He stepped into the job just as attorneys general across the country began to gain more power, working across state lines on issues like suing tobacco companies for the public health costs associated with smoking.

In Texas, Cornyn created the solicitor general’s office, an elite, specialized unit of lawyers to handle state and federal appeals all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The office drew young, smart lawyers with the promise of courtroom experience.The office also began to slowly wade into more political lawsuits over topics like abortion laws and religion in schools.

2002: Greg Abbott elected attorney general

Like Cornyn, Greg Abbott left the Texas Supreme Court and was elected attorney general. But Texas Republicans now controlled the state Legislature and every statewide office. Under Abbott, the attorney general’s office more clearly championed conservatism.

Lawyers who felt politically alignedflocked to the office, including Ted Cruz,who was hired by Abbott as solicitor general and is now one of Texas’ two U.S. senators. Under Abbott and Cruz’s leadership, the office defended conservative principles in federal cases about abortion, voting and guns — even if they did not directly involve Texas.

Read more about how the agency came to draw conservative lawyers and leaders in the first part of our series here.

2008: President Barack Obama elected

Republicans had lost the White House and Congress, but they found power in the Texas attorney general’s office. Under Abbott, Texas brought more than 30 lawsuits against the Obama administration in six years.

Texas’s federal legal fights, which often argued that Obama had overstepped the power granted to the president in the U.S. Constitution, included attempts to:

Stop the Affordable Care Act, the federal expansion of government-subsidized health care.

BlockDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protections for young people who entered the country illegally with their parents.

Guard businesses against environmental regulations intended to stave off climate change. CPP?

2014: Ken Paxton elected attorney general

Paxton, a former Republican state lawmaker, quickly pushed the office further to the right.

Paxton, who found early support among advocates of religious liberty, joined a conservative Christian legal movement against federal LGBTQ+ protections, which gained traction after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling establishing protections for same-sex marriage.

His office began strategically filing lawsuits in remote areas of Texas where just one judge hears most cases, ensuring any cases would be heard by a conservative judge.

Read more about how Texas took on the Obama administration in the second part of our series here.

2016: President Donald Trump elected

After Obama failed to prioritize judicial appointments, Trump entered office with more judicial vacancies than almost any president in U.S. history.

By then, Cornyn and Cruz had gained influence on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and nominated a class of young, conservative lawyers to become judges, many of whom had worked in the Texas attorney general’s office.

Nine federal judges appointed by the Trump administration from 2018-20 had previously worked in the Texas attorney general’s office under Cornyn, Abbott or Paxton.

Trump also appointed seven conservative judges to single-judge divisions in Texas, hugely expanding the number of venues where Paxton could file cases and effectively handpick the judge who would hear it. And with four former Texas attorney general employees appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas also increased its odds of getting favorable appeals rulings.

Lawyers like Jonathan Mitchell, a private lawyer and solicitor general under Abbott, have also taken advantage of the increasingly conservative roster of judges. Mitchell, for example, scored a victory with a Trump-appointed judge in a case that blocked confidential contraception access for minors in Texas.

2020: President Joe Biden elected

The Texas attorney general’s office has continued barraging the federal government with lawsuits over issues such as environmental protections and immigration policies.

The office now sees itself as at war with “the forces that want to destroy the American order, root and branch,” as Aaron Reitz, former deputy attorney general, said in November 2021. “Our soldiers are lawyers, and our weapons are lawsuits, and our tactic is lawfare. This is the project that we’re engaged in.”

Although conservative judges have not always taken up or supported the cases, the office has succeeded in delaying the rollout of federal policies amid ongoing lawsuits.

2023: Paxton impeached

In June, the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton after he asked the Texas Legislature to fund a $3.3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought on by former employees.

A House committee launched an investigation into the matter, resulting in 20 articles of impeachment listing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct. Paxton was suspended from his role and is awaiting a Senate impeachment trial scheduled to begin Sept. 5.

Paxton has faced criminal investigations, legal battles and accusations of wrongdoing for years. But he had eluded consequences and remained popular with Texas voters.

A handful of top agency employees took leaves of absence to defend Paxton. But the office has continued launching legal challenges against new federal smog regulations and protections for transgender student athletes under interim attorneys general appointed by Abbott.

And if a Republican is elected to the presidency in 2024, Texas conservatives could make further inroads in the judicial system, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read more about how Trump helped cement Texas’ influence in federal courts in the third part of our series here.

Eleanor Klibanoff contributed to this story.

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no lnx an 7 23

Trump-appointed judges have ruled favorably to conservative Christians but not other religions: study

Alex Henderson July 17, 2023

During his one term as president, Donald Trump left his mark not only on the U.S. Supreme Court, but also, on the lower federal courts.

One third of the High Court is now comprised of Trump-appointed justices: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The Court was leaning conservative long before Trump's presidency, but Trump pushed a specific type of Republican: strict social conservatives who are favorable to the Religious Right's evangelical fundamentalist agenda.

According to a study by New York University's Stephen J. Choi, the University of Virginia's Mitu Gulati and the University of Chicago's Eric A. Posner, the judges Trump appointed to the lower federal courts were likely to be favorable to the Religious Right — although not to Muslims.

READ MORE: 'Huge victory for democracy' as Supreme Court rejects fringe Trump-backed election theory

The New York Times' Adam Liptak notes, "The study found, for instance, that judges named by Mr. Trump had 'stronger or more numerous religious affiliations' with churches and other houses of worship, with religious schools, and with groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty, which have won a series of major Supreme Court cases for conservative Christians. Trump appointees were also much more likely to be members of theFederalist Society, the conservative legal group, than other Republican appointees: 56 percent versus 22 percent."

The study found that Trump-appointed judges had "stronger or more numerous religious affiliations" with churches and with Religious Right groups like First Liberty and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Choi noted, however, that"the specific religion in question" often had a lot to do with how Trump-appointed judges ruled.

"Trump appointees voted in favor of plaintiffs claiming that their right to free exercise of religion had been violated about 45 percent of the time, compared with 36 percent for other Republican appointees and 33 percent of Democratic appointees," Liptak observes. "The gap grew for cases that involved only Christians, to more than 56 percent, compared with 42 percent for other Republican appointees and 29 percent for Democratic ones."

Liptak adds that "the numbers flipped when it came to Muslims, with Trump appointees at 19 percent, compared with 34 percent for other Republican appointees and 48 percent for Democratic ones."

READ MORE: 'Arrest the reporter': Donald Trump demands Supreme Court jail journalists over abortion decision leak

According to the researchers, "The pattern that emerges is consistent with conventional wisdom: Democrats tend to protect minority religions, and Republicans tend to protect Christianity (and possibly Judaism)."

READ MORE: 'One of the very best decisions I ever made': Clinton honors Ginsburg on anniversary of nomination

Find the New York Times' full article at this link (subscription required).

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Unqualified judges

"President Donald "Trump has nominated more unqualified judicial appointees than any other president so quickly into his first term, a whopping four out of 58, according to the nation's preeminent legal group. The American Bar Association's Standing Committee of the Federal Judiciary, which has been evaluating judicial appointments since the 1950s, has assessed 53 of Trump's 58 nominees and found four "not qualified."

The Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee has already approved three of the four unqualified judges, who are awaiting a simple majority confirmation vote in the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he will push through the Trump nominees."- Newsweek

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ref the hill

federal judge blocked Bidenadministration officials Tuesday from communicating with social media companies, astwo Republican state attorneys general challenge the legality of the administration’s efforts to curb disinformation.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, [ vax for rx workers?! offshore oil]who was appointed by former President Trump, granted a preliminary injunction barring a wide swath of officials from theDepartment of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Justice, the State Department and the FBI from communicating with the companies.

The Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri are suing the administration over what they describe as a “campaign of censorship,” in which the Biden administration allegedly “coordinated and colluded with social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content.”

They argued that administration officials’ public and private communications with social media companies about removing content related to COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures, election integrity and other topics violated the First Amendment.

The attorneys general pointed to various calls by the 2020 Biden campaign and later the Biden administration, as well other Democratic lawmakers, to reform Section 230 over the spread of disinformation, which the lawsuit characterized as “threats” and a “campaign of pressure.”

Section 230 waives social media companies’ liability for content posted on its platforms by third parties.

They also cited efforts by the Biden administration to work with social media companies to rein in COVID-19 and election disinformation, which the suit described as “collusion.” [fauci said deworm no work, tho no causal link]

Under the injunction, Biden administration officials cannot email, call, send letters, text or meet with social media companies “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms,” Doughty ruled.

However, Biden administration officials are still permitted to communicate with the platforms about criminal activity, national security threats,threats to public safety [but not health?]and posts “intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures.”

TAGS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FIRST AMENDMENT FREE SPEECH JOE BIDEN SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS TERRY DOUGHTY

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https://newrepublic.com/article/172480/barre-seid-leonard-leo-dark-money-king

...The amicus curiae brief is one of the network’s favored weapons. ProPublica has identified at least six groups funded by Leo’s network that have filed amicus briefs supporting a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, who wants to refuse to work for gay people, and whose lawsuit, now at the Supreme Court, would overturn Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. Twenty Republican attorneys general have also filed an amicus brief in support of the case through the Republican Attorneys General Association. RAGA has received huge tranches of Leo’s largesse for years. In 2022, a Leo-connected group donated $6.5 million to RAGA, according to ProPublica. RAGA money went into PACs targeting Democrats in the midterms. RAGA coordinates Republican attorneys general in pro-corporate, anti-progressive legal action. Those include 19 attorneys general who are pressuring investors like BlackRock to abandon environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investments aimed at curtailing climate pollution. RAGA money has also been traced to organizations involved in the January 6 insurrection, and the group filed anamicus brief in support of dismissing federal criminal charges against Michael Flynn,the Trump administration’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Other organizations linked to Leo, including the Judicial Crisis Network and the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative, are pouring money into state judge races. A Grid News investigation found that Leo-connected groups have put “$31 million in campaign funds into at least 42 races for seats on state Supreme Courts or other high-level state judgeships in 15 states since 2010.” These obscure, low-interest races are increasingly critical as the Supreme Court tosses decisions about everything from abortion to elections down to the states.

Senator Whitehouse has devoted himself to tracking dark money, especially money aimed at reshaping the law and court-packing. He has given much thought to what motivates a man to leave his entire fortune to a regressive, dark money funnel. “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king,” Whitehouse said, quoting Bruce Springsteen. “That’s the song. If you are a creepy right-wing billionaire and you know the public hates your view of the world, the only way to be king is to work your way around democratic processes, go clandestine, and find a scamp like Leonard Leo who knows how to move levers secretly.”

What $1.6 Billion Means

Seid’s bequest is believed to be the largest dark money donation in U.S. history. Charitable nonprofits are required to disclose their major donors, but the IRS class of political recipients defined as “social welfare” groups like Leo’s Marble trust are not. “Seid’s donation seems to be one of the largest, if not the largest, single political donation ever given,” said Kathleen Enright, president of the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit association of philanthropic entities. “But to be clear, this is not a charitable contribution by any means. It is a political contribution made to support a political agenda.”

How it works is: If Warren Buffett sets up a charitable foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization under IRS rules, it must spend transparently. Political action committees engaging in candidate support also must disclose donors. But when a billionaire throws a fortune at a “social welfare,” 501(c)(4) status organization, the IRS doesn’t require donor disclosure. Beyond Leo and his coterie, nobody knows how the money is being spent, or whether Seid put any restrictions on it. If Leo’s past is precedent, the money will support cherished right-wing goals: expanded gun rights, further erasure of the wall between church and state, rollbacks of civil rights on various fronts, and federal and state judges who will rule favorably on those issues.

Some of the money might wind up in the pockets of Leo and his pals. In March, Politico published an investigation finding that Leo-controlled nonprofits moved $43 million into his for-profit political consultancy, CRC Advisors, which he has been running since around the time of the Seid donation. The investigation dated the start of Leo’s “lifestyle upgrade,” with real estate and other perks, to 2016, the year he became Trump’s judge-picker.

In the wake of the Politico report, Senator Whitehouse and others are calling for an IRS investigation. “Leonard Leo’s new lavish lifestyle appears to be his reward for helping anonymous right-wing billionaires capture our Supreme Court,” Whitehouse said in a statement to The New Republic. “But questions remain about how he is getting paid and by whom, and who is behind the front groups communicating instructions to the justices through amicus briefs. People need to understand the level of coordination among dozens of supposedly independent groups that are played like piano keys by a manipulative donor elite. It’s an operation, not a coincidence.”

Whitehouse cited “Republican political battering of a previous IRS Commissioner” for the agency’s oversight “ineffectuality.” Kathleen Enright concurred. “The charitable sector has always valued and supported fair oversight,” she said. “However, the IRS division that regulates these organizations has been hollowed out in recent years, so the mechanisms to ensure the checks and balances that preserve the credibility of nonprofits, and the people and organizations that fund them, is woefully inadequate. Rebuilding that accountability and enforcement capacity is an important first step to rebuilding trust in the sector.”

Besides the question of what to spend Seid’s pile on, Leo can also decide how long to hold on to the money. He could spend Seid’s money all at once, essentially dropping a billion on a candidate or cause on one or a few cycles. Or he could treat it more like an endowment, invest it, and spend the income. That choice is not available to most charitable entities, since they rarely receive such large gifts, Enright said. “An operating nonprofit that received a gift of this size would be wise to put some portion into an endowment for future needs, given that it’s unlikely they will receive similar gifts in the future.”

Gara LaMarche is a past president of Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors, and no stranger to allocating big money. In his previous position as president of Atlantic Philanthropies, LaMarche spent half a billion dollars a year in the process of doling out a $4 billion fund according to the wishes of billionaire Chuck Feeney, who made his fortune in duty-free shops. Feeney had mandated that the money be spent over a short time on four program areas: population health, aging, disadvantaged youth, and human rights and reconciliation. Atlantic laid a great deal of grassroots groundwork for the passage of Obamacare.

Still, LaMarche is impressed by the Seid donation, which he compared to the endowment of a very significant charitable foundation. The Democracy Alliance has never spent more than $100 million a year, he said. He wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what Leo plans to spend it on, but LaMarche suggested several possible spending styles. Leo could spend it fast—say, $400 million over four election cycles. “Shorter time, bigger impact,” said LaMarche. “Or he could save it and spend it as an endowment. It’s enough money so you could have a very significant program just off the interest of the endowment—hundreds of millions of dollars without touching the nut. My guess is it will be a combination.”

Besides legally saving him hundreds of millions in taxes, Seid’s structuring the gift as a stock transfer increased the size of the gift by 20 to 25 percent over what it would have been if Seid first sold his shares and then made the donation. “Under current law, that approach just makes sense,” Enright said. “However, the broader questions remain of whether this scale of influence on our elections is good for our democratic system, and whether donors to political causes should be able to reap tax benefits by structuring gifts in this way. If you believe unchecked political giving is unhealthy, as we do, that requires changes to the law.”

Philip Hackney is associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in nonprofits and their tax exemptions. Hackney explained that the IRS has been battered from the right, first in 2014, after a manufactured scandal alleging that the Obama IRS targeted conservatives, and further with a Trump-era IRS decision to stop requiring recipients of political dark money to reveal the names of donors. “The system is allowing people to completely avoid wealth tax on future generations and accomplish political goals,” Hackney said. “Then the IRS moves in 2019–2020 made it very hard to see these wealth games happening. We are ensconcing dynasties and giving federal money to accomplish that. Why would you allow a billionaire to use this system to get more money from government to accomplish their goals?” Hackney offered an answer to his own question: “There is a part of our institutional structure that believes wealthy people are brilliant and deserve the right to ample political speech.”

The Barre Seid bequest should alert all Americans to the extent of the damage Citizens United does to democracy. So far, it has only caused ripples of fear through the political junkie class on the progressive side. But it should freak you out, and here’s why.

The Federalist Society, with an annual expenditure of around $20 million, remade the Supreme Court and seeded the federal bench with enough extremists to overturn gun control laws in places like New York and Chicago, chip away at the Affordable Care Act, and overturn the Food and Drug Administration when it comes to approval of an abortion pill. Leo’s people spent a mere $6.5 million to gin up an amicus curiae machine that, for example, aims to ensure that discriminating against gay people is federally protected.

...

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no lnx

trump judge

Federal judge rules in favor of GOP lawmaker being allowed to question former prosecutor

Meaghan Ellis April 20, 2023

A federal judge has ruled that House Republican lawmakers will be allowed to question a former Manhattan prosecutor in reference to the investigation and criminal charges being brought against former President Donald Trump.

According to HuffPost, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil delivered a favorable ruling for Republicans when she denied Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's request for a temporary restraining order. Vyskocil insists Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) arguments are within legislative guidelines.

The ruling allows the committee chair to move forward with questioning.

READ MORE: 'Church-style': House GOP 'weaponization' committee hit with unexpectedly low budget for new probe

In a 25-page opinion, Vyskocil, a Trump-appointed, shared details to explain the reasoning behind her decision.

“It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection,” Vyskocil wrote. “Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law.”

Per HuffPost:

Acknowledging the "political dogfights" surrounding the case, the judge said in her ruling that she "does not endorse either side’s agenda." She encouraged both sides to speak and "reach a mutually agreeable compromise" on how Pomerantz’s deposition will proceed. Jordan is seeking to question him Thursday morning in Washington.

Weighing in on Vyskocil's decision, Jordan's spokesman Russell Dye, released a statement.

READ MORE: DC insider predicts what will happen in the biggest battle between House GOP and White House

“Today’s decision shows that Congress has the ability to conduct oversight and issue subpoenas to people like Mark Pomerantz, and we look forward to his deposition before the Judiciary Committee,” Jordan’s spokesperson said.

READ MORE: Kevin McCarthy instructs House GOP to 'immediately investigate' looming Donald Trump indictments

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United States courts of appeals

Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
- Gregory G. Katsas‡ (born 1964)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
- Brett Kavanaugh† (born 1965)^{[46][48][44][49]} (nominated and confirmed)
Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit
- Thomas Hardiman* (born 1965)^[19][48][50]
- Peter J. Phipps‡ (born 1973)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit
- Allison Jones Rushing‡ (born 1982)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit
- Kyle Duncan‡ (born 1972)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
- James C. Ho‡ (born 1973)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
- Don Willett* (born 1966)^[19] (appointed by Trump)[note ^1]^
Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
- Raymond Kethledge* (born 1966)^[19][48][50]
- Joan Larsen* (born 1968)^[19] (appointed by Trump)[note ^2]^
- Amul Thapar** (born 1969)^[20][48] (elevated by Trump)[note ^3]^
Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
- Amy Coney Barrett† (born 1972)^[44] (appointed by Trump)[note ^4]^ (nominated and confirmed)
- Diane Sykes* (born 1957)^[19]
Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit
- Steven Colloton* (born 1963)^[19]
- Raymond Gruender* (born 1963)^[19]
- David Stras* (born 1974)^[19] (appointed by Trump)[note ^5]^
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
- Bridget S. Bade‡ (born 1965)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
- Lawrence VanDyke‡ (born 1972)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit
- Allison Eid* (born 1965)^[19] (appointed by Trump)[note ^6]^
- Neil Gorsuch** (born 1967)^[20][21] (nominated and confirmed)
- Timothy Tymkovich** (born 1956)^[20]
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit
- Britt Grant† (born 1978)^[44] (appointed by Trump)[note ^7]^
- Barbara Lagoa‡ (born 1967)^[45] (appointed by Trump)
- Kevin Newsom† (born 1972)^[44] (appointed by Trump)[note ^8]^
- Bill Pryor* (born 1962)^[19]
Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
- Margaret A. Ryan** (born 1964)^[20]

United States district courts

Federico A. Moreno** (born 1952) – senior judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida^[20]
Martha M. Pacold‡ (born 1979)^[45] – district judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (appointed by Trump)
Sarah Pitlyk‡ (born 1977)^[45] – district judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri (appointed by Trump)
Patrick Wyrick† (born 1981)^[44] – district judge, United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma (appointed by Trump)[note ^9]^

State supreme courts

Keith R. Blackwell** (born 1975) – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia^[20]
Charles T. Canady** (born 1954) – Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Florida^[20]
Thomas Rex Lee* (born 1964) – Associate Justice, Utah Supreme Court^[19]
Edward Mansfield** (born 1957) – Associate Justice, Iowa Supreme Court^[20]
Carlos G. Muñiz‡ (born 1969)^[45] – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Florida
Robert P. Young Jr.** (born 1951) – former chief justice, Michigan Supreme Court^[20]

Executive branch

Paul Clement‡ (born 1966)^[45] – former solicitor general of the United States
Steven Engel‡ (born 1974)^[45] – United States assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel
Noel Francisco‡ (born 1969)^[45] – former solicitor general of the United States
Christopher Landau‡ (born 1963)^[45] – United States ambassador to Mexico
Kate Comerford Todd‡ (born 1975)^[45] – Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President

United States senators

Tom Cotton‡ (born 1977) – Senator from Arkansas^[45]
Ted Cruz‡ (born 1970) – Senator from Texas^[45]
Josh Hawley‡ (born 1979) – Senator from Missouri^[45]
Mike Lee** (born 1971) – Senator from Utah^[20][48]

State executive branches

Daniel Cameron‡ (born 1985)^[45] – Attorney General of Kentucky

Biography

Kacsmaryk received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Abilene Christian University in 1999 and his Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 2003.^[1]

From 2003 to 2008, he was an associate in the Dallas office of Baker Botts, where he focused on commercial, constitutional, and intellectual property litigation. From 2008 through 2013, he was an Assistant United States Attorney (federal prosecutor) in the Northern District of Texas where he was lead counsel in over 75 criminal appeals and co-counsel in high-profile criminal and terrorism trials.^[1] In 2013, under the Obama Administration, Kacsmaryk received the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Furthering the Interests of U.S. National Security for his work in United States v. Aldawsari.^[2] He was Deputy General Counsel to First Liberty Institute. ^[3]^ He has been a member of the Fort Worth chapter of the Federalist Society since 2012.^[3] He has been a member of the Red Mass Committee for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Forth Worth. ^[3]^

Federal judicial service

On September 7, 2017, Trump nominated Kacsmaryk to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, to the seat vacated by Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who assumed senior status on February 3, 2016.^[4] On December 13, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[5] On January 3, 2018, his nomination was returned to the President under **Rule XXXI,**Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.^[6] On January 5, 2018, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk to a federal judgeship.^[7] On January 8, 2018, his renomination was sent to the Senate.^[8] On January 18, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote.^[9]

The American Bar Association rated Kacsmaryk "qualified" for the nomination (a ranking below "well qualified").^[10] However, Senate Democrats and a number of LGBT advocacy groups opposed his nomination due to his writings and comments on LGBT rights and women's contraceptive rights.^[11][12] He has worked on religious liberty cases opposing certain LGBT protections in housing, employment and health care.^[13] He has referred to homosexuality as "disordered",^[14] and to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental disorder".^[13] He opposes the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States.^[13][10] He opposed the legalization of premarital sex.^[15]

On January 3, 2019, his nomination was returned to the President under**Rule XXXI,** Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate. On January 23, 2019, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk for a federal judgeship.^[16] His nomination was sent to the Senate later that day.^[17] On February 7, 2019, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 12–10 vote.^[18] On June 18, 2019, the Senate voted 52–44 to invoke cloture on his nomination.^[19] On June 19, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a vote of 52–46.^[20][14] He received his judicial commission on June 21, 2019.

Kacsmaryk currently presides over the Amarillo Division of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which encompasses twenty-six counties in the Texas Panhandle.^[21]

In 2021, Kacsmaryk ordered the reinstatement of a Trump administration policy that required that asylum seekers wait outside U.S. territory while their claims are processed. In Kacsmaryk's order, he said that the Biden administration had ended the policy without fully considering the consequences.^[22] His decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 30, 2022.^[23]

Trump judge

“Breakdown” of a Presumption

Erosion of Trust, Ethics Inquiries

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’

Snowflakes

‘The perfect villain’

Army of lefties

Hypotheticals

Judges signal support for ‘forever chemicals’ Superfund rule

Early life and education

Legal career

Federal judicial service

Memberships

Personal life

Federal judicial service

Withdrawn nomination to district court

Court of appeals service

Stanford Law School protest

united States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (2019)

Confirmation vote

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing

Nomination

Early life and education

Military service

Professional career

Awards

About the court

Unqualified judges

United States courts of appeals

United States district courts

State supreme courts

Executive branch

United States senators

State executive branches

See also

Contents

Biography

Federal judicial service

See also

climate Reprieve: Court allows Biden to weigh the social cost of carbon in policymaking

jUDGE CARL NICHOLS UPENDS DOJ’S JANUARY 6 PROSECUTION STRATEGY

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