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update - fired DoJ lawyer blows whistle on culture of lying to judges and unethical behaviour at senior Trump DoJ leadership level

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mandrill

mandrill

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CNN's Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid noted a couple of important outstanding questions the Supreme Court left open following its decision on Monday to allow President Donald Trump's administration to deport migrants to countries that are not their home country.



The court's decision stayed a decision from a lower court that required the Department of Homeland Security to provide written notice of its intent to deport migrants and give them time to dispute their final destination. Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said last month that deporting migrants without due process unquestionably violated their Constitutional rights. The government has claimed the migrants are violent criminals and don't deserve to be in the country.

By staying the lower court's decision, the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to continue deporting people to third countries like Sudan, even if they have no ties to that country. Reid said this opens up the possibility that up to 1 million people could face deportation because of the Supreme Court's ruling.

Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.



Reid flagged what she called the "biggest outstanding question" facing the Supreme Court — the power that lower courts have over domestic policy.

"This question comes about related to President Trump's efforts to limit birthright citizenship," Reid said, referring to a lawsuit the Trump administration filed seeking to stop lower courts from using nationwide injunctions to block his administration's policies.

Reid added that the Supreme Court could issue a decision in that case in as little as 10 days.

An analysis by CBS News of nationwide injunctions found that lawyers on both sides of the political aisle tend to seek out judges who already share their worldview before filing lawsuits seeking an injunction.

'Biggest outstanding' question facing Supreme Court flagged by CNN reporter
 
mandrill

mandrill

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The Florida Attorney General asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to enforce a new immigration law that makes it a misdemeanor for people living in the U.S. illegally to enter the state.

The petition is the latest in a months-long battle between Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and district U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. Last week Williams held Uthmeier in contempt for instructing officers to continue enforcing the new law despite the judge's orders to stop enforcement until the courts decide whether the law is constitutional.



The attorney general’s appeal to the Supreme Court said the state has a right to use the law to protect itself from the harm of illegal immigration. The legislation tracks federal law and the injunction shouldn’t cover every officer in the state “who never had their day in court,” the appeal argued.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the legislation into law in February as part of President Donald Trump’s push to crack down on illegal immigration, though many of Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts are mired in battles with federal judges.

Immigrants rights groups filed lawsuits on behalf of two unnamed, Florida-based immigrants living in the U.S. illegally shortly after the bill was signed into law. The lawsuit said that the new legislation violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution by encroaching on federal duties.

Williams issued a temporary restraining order and injunction that barred the enforcement of the new law statewide in April. The attorney general's office then unsuccessfully petitioned the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to override that decision.



After Williams issued her original order, Uthmeier sent a memo to state and local law enforcement officers telling them to refrain from enforcing the law, even though he disagreed with the injunction. But five days later, he sent a memo saying the judge was legally wrong and that he couldn’t prevent police officers and deputies from enforcing the law.

“Again, he may well be right that the district court’s order is impermissibly broad,” the appellate judges said of Uthmeier. “But that does not warrant what seems to have been at least a veiled threat not to obey it.”

Florida asks Supreme Court to reinstate immigration law as lower courts weigh constitutionality
 
mandrill

mandrill

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday blocked another effort by the Trump administration to keep international students from attending Harvard University, saying officials’ “misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution” threatened freedom of speech.

The order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston preserves the ability of foreign students to travel to the U.S. for study at Harvard while the case is decided.

President Donald Trump has sought to cut off Harvard’s enrollment of foreign students as part of a pressure campaign seeking changes to governance and policies at the Ivy League school. Administration officials also have cut more than $2.6 billion in research grants, ended federal contracts and threatened to revoke the tax-exempt status for the school Trump has derided as a hotbed of liberalism.

Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 foreign students to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally.

apnews.com

Judge halts another Trump administration effort to block foreign students from attending Harvard

A federal judge has blocked another effort by the Trump administration to keep international students from attending Harvard University, granting a second preliminary injunction in the case.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
mandrill

mandrill

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Aug 23, 2001
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The American public’s trust in the Supreme Court has fallen precipitously over the past decade. Many across the political spectrum see the court as too political.

This view is only strengthened when Americans see most of the justices of the court dividing along ideological lines on decisions related to some of the most hot-button issues the court handles. Those include reproductive rights, voting rights, corporate power, environmental protection, student loan policy, worker rights and LGBTQ+ rights.



But there is one recent decision where the court was unanimous in its ruling, perhaps because its holding should not be controversial: National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that 2024 case, the court said that it’s a clear violation of the First Amendment’s free speech provisions for government to force people to speak and act in ways that are aligned with its policies.

The second Trump administration has tried to wield executive branch power in ways that appear to punish or suppress speech and opposition to administration policy priorities. Many of those attempts have been legally challenged and will likely make their way to the Supreme Court.

The somewhat under-the-radar – yet incredibly important – decision in National Rifle Association v. Vullo is likely to figure prominently in Supreme Court rulings in a slew of those cases in the coming months and years, including those involving law firms, universities and the Public Broadcasting Service.



That’s because, in my view as a legal scholar, they are all First Amendment cases.

Why the NRA sued a New York state official

In May 2024, in an opinion written by reliably liberal Sonia Sotomayor, a unanimous court ruled that the efforts of New York state government officials to punish companies doing business with the NRA constituted clear violations of the First Amendment.

Following its own precedent from the 1960s, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the court found that government officials “cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

Many of the current targets of the Trump administration’s actions have claimed similar suppression of their First Amendment rights by the government. They have fought back, filing lawsuits that often cite the National Rifle Association v. Vullo decision in their efforts.


To date, the most egregious examples of actions that violate the principles announced by the court – the executive orders against law firms – have largely been halted in the lower courts, with those decisions often citing what’s now known as the Vullo decision.

While these cases may still be working their way through the lower courts, it is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately consider legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts in a range of areas.

These would include the executive orders against law firms, attempts to cut government grants and research funding from universities, potential moves to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, and regulatory actions punishing media companies for what the White House believes to be unfavorable coverage.

The court could also hear disputes over the government terminating contracts with a family of companies that provides satellite and communications support to the U.S. government generally and the military in particular.


Despite the variety of organizations and government actions involved in these lawsuits, they all can be seen as struggles over free speech and expression, like Vullo.

Whether it is private law firms, multinational corporations, universities or members of the media, all have one thing in common: They have all been targeted by the Trump administration for the same reason – they are engaged in actions or speech that is disfavored by President Donald Trump.

The NRA, an often-controversial gun-rights advocacy organization, was the plaintiff in the Vullo decision.

But just because the groups that have been targeted by the Trump administration are across the political divide from the NRA does not mean the outcome in decisions relying on the court’s opinion will be different. In fact, these groups can rely on the same arguments advanced by the NRA, and are, I believe, likely to win.


Vullo isn’t the only decision on which the court can rely when considering challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts targeting these groups.

In the wake of World War II, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson took a leave from the court and served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. Prosecuting them for their atrocities, Jackson saw how the Nuremberg defendants wielded government authority to punish enemies who resisted their rise and later opposed their rule.

Once he returned to the court, Jackson wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where the court found that students who refused to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school could not be expelled.

Jackson’s opinion is a forceful rejection of government attempts to control what people say: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”


If some of the cases testing the state’s power to force fidelity to the executive branch reach the Supreme Court, the cases could offer the justices the opportunity to, once again, speak with one voice as they did in NRA v. Vullo, to demonstrate it can be evenhanded and will not play politics with the First Amendment.

Ray Brescia, Associate Dean for Research and Intellectu

This obscure Supreme Court decision could impact Trump's agenda — and restore faith in the court
 
mandrill

mandrill

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Aug 23, 2001
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In the latest legal loss for the Trump administration, a federal judge on Monday evening ordered executive officials to restore grants they terminated to the University of California.

The ruling, from Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, was flagged on X by Politico's Kyle Cheney.



The grants were terminated on the basis of the research including topics and keywords blacklisted by the Trump administration, primarily work involving diversity, equity and inclusion. Among the canceled grants were for a study that looked into how wildfire smoke disproportionately harms communities of color.

Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.

This is almost certainly unlawful, wrote Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.

"Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims that the termination of grants for research involving blacklisted topics like 'diversity' and 'equity' violates the First Amendment and runs contrary to Congress’s specific directives to support research concerning — and foster greater involvement in the sciences of — underrepresented groups," wrote Lin. "Although a new presidential administration is entitled to develop programs with its chosen priorities, the Executive may not set out to suppress ideas it deems dangerous by trying to drive them out of the marketplace of ideas, and may not do so by canceling grants on the basis that they serve the very purposes for which Congress appropriated the funds."



These fundings cuts, if allowed to continue, wrote Lin, would likely cause layoffs, as well as disruptions to research and education.

"Plaintiffs are also likely to succeed on their claims that the en masse terminations via form letter were arbitrary and capricious," Lin wrote. "The law requires administrative agencies to provide reasoned explanations for their decisions, particularly when changing a longstanding practice and abruptly upending years of planning and work. The form termination letters here appear to be in blatant violation of that requirement."

Trump has worked to purge any endorsement of DEI from the federal government and has often required companies doing business with the federal government to abandon their diversity programs as well. The effort to root these programs out has been so extreme that even some businesses that have the acronym "DEI" for unrelated reasons fear reprisal.

'Blatant violation': Judge smacks down Trump for canceling university's grants
 
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