update - Fed'l judge rules Alina Habba is illegal and voids all her official actions

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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.

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

 

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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

 

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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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Thread by @ReichlinMelnick on Thread Reader App

@ReichlinMelnick: NEW: Erez Reuveni, the DOJ lawyer fired for his honesty in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, tells Congress that Emil Bove suggested the DOJ respond to any court orders blocking the CECOT deportations...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

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Erez Reuveni, a top lawyer who was kicked to the curb by the Department of Justice for not defending their agenda to deport men to El Salvador without due process, has officially blown the whistle.
The lawyer filed a 27-page report Tuesday, obtained by The New York Times, detailing the many ways in which Attorney General Pam Bondi and judicial nominee Emil Bove III have illegally dodged and intimidated others to get their way.

Emil Bove

On one hand, this information feels less than shocking given how President Donald Trump and his team outright ignored orders to stop planes that were en route to detainment centers. However, this marks the first time someone who was on the inside has spoken out about it specifically.
In the filing, Reuveni recalls how Bove—whose nomination for circuit court judge is scheduled for Wednesday—blatantly ignored Judge James E. Boasberg’s orders to keep planeloads of immigrants on U.S. soil. Not only that, but Reuveni’s supervisor, Drew Ensign, allegedly lied to Boasberg’s face during a hearing when asked if he knew about any upcoming plans to fly immigrants to other detention centers in the next 24 to 48 hours.

According to the report, Ensign told Boasberg, “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
But if you ask Reuveni, the potential new circuit judge had informed him just the day before.
“Ensign had been present in the previous day’s meeting when Emil Bove stated clearly that one or more planes containing individuals subject to the [Alien Enemies Act] would be taking off over the weekend no matter what.”
Reuveni went on to detail how Bove and others withheld information for as long as possible from Boasberg to keep the deportation flights in the air.
And as the former top lawyer laid out example after example showing how the administration was brazenly defying the courts, he eventually recalled how he was faced with his own ultimatum.
In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who was wrongly abducted by ICE and deported to El Salvador’s terrorism confinement center, Reuveni was tasked with defending the U.S. government’s decision to keep Garcia locked up. However, as the facts unfolded, Reuveni could not. According to his filing, he was asked by another supervisor, August Flentje, to sign testimony stating that Garcia was a terrorist. Ultimately, he chose not to, which led to his firing.
While Garcia has returned back to the U.S. and Trump’s cronies lost the fight of labeling him as a dangerous MS-13 gang member, his legal battles are still ongoing. As of Monday, a judge ordered his release for an ongoing human smuggling case—the Trump administration’s latest claim.
However, the DOJ is threatening to deport Garcia the moment he steps outside of jail. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement obtained by CBS Monday that Garcia "will never go free on American soil."

Then again, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes doesn’t see a reason for all of the hostility.
"Overall, the Court cannot find from the evidence presented that Abrego Garcia's release clearly and convincingly poses an irremediable danger to other persons or to the community," she wrote.


Garcia’s case is ongoing, but he may be one of the lucky men who has seen the outside of El Salvador’s CECOT. Of the over 250 immigrants deported, so far only Garcia has been granted any sort of due process for the crimes he is accused of committing.


Other men, such as 24-year-old Widmer Josneyder Agelviz-Sanguino, are still being held despite the only provided evidence for their imprisonment being the tattoos on their body.

Fired DOJ lawyer exposes Bondi’s blatant disregard for the law

Erez Reuveni, a top lawyer who was kicked to the curb by the Department of Justice for not defending their agenda to deport men to El Salvador without due process, has officially blown the whistle.�

www.dailykos.com

 

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A federal jury on Monday awarded $500,000 to the widow and estate of a police officer who died by suicide nine days after he helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of rioters, including a man who scuffled with the officer during the attack.

The eight-member jury ordered that man, 69-year-old chiropractor David Walls-Kaufman, to pay $380,000 in punitive damages and $60,000 in compensatory damages to Erin Smith for assaulting her husband, Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They awarded an additional $60,000 to compensate Jeffrey Smith's estate for his pain and suffering.

The judge presiding over the civil trial dismissed Erin Smith's wrongful-death claim against Walls-Kaufman before jurors began deliberating last week. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said no reasonable juror could conclude that Walls-Kaufman's actions were capable of causing a traumatic brain injury leading to Smith's death.

Walls-Kaufman, who lived a few blocks from the Capitol, denied assaulting Smith. He says any injuries that the officer suffered on Jan. 6 occurred later in the day, when another rioter threw a pole that struck Smith around his head.

On Friday, the jury sided with Erin Smith and held Walls-Kaufman liable for assaulting her 35-year-old husband — an encounter captured on the officer's body camera.




"Erin is grateful to receive some measure of justice," said David P. Weber, one of her attorneys.

Walls-Kaufman said the outcome of the trial is "absolutely ridiculous."

"No crime happened. I never struck the officer. I never intended to strike the officer," he said. "I'm just stunned."

After the jury left the courtroom, Reyes encouraged the parties to confer and discuss a possible settlement to avoid the time and expense of an appeal and for the sake of "finality."


"You guys settle, you can move on with your lives," the judge said.

Walls-Kaufman's attorney, Hughie Hunt, described the jury's award as "shocking."

"We're talking about a three-second event," he told the judge.

"It's not shocking, Mr. Hunt. A lot of things can happen in three seconds," Reyes replied.

Jeffrey Smith was driving to work for the first time after the Capitol riot when he shot himself with his service weapon. His family said he had no history of mental health problems before the Jan. 6 riot. Erin Smith claims Walls-Kaufman struck her husband in the head with his own police baton, giving him a concussion and causing psychological and physical trauma that led to his suicide.

Body camera footage obtained by CBS News appears to show that Jeffrey Smith was the target of multiple assaults on Jan. 6, at least once inside the Capitol and then again a few hours later — outside at the west front of the Capitol. The images of the attack were pivotal to Erin Smith's efforts to change the designation of her husband's death.

"I think the physical attack on him changed him," Erin Smith told CBS News in 2022. "If he didn't go to work that day, he'd still be here."

Undated: Erin and Jeffrey Smith Jack Reznicki, photo provided by Erin Smith
The police department medically evaluated Smith and cleared him to return to full duty before he died by suicide. In 2022, the District of Columbia Police and Firefighters' Retirement and Relief Board determined that Smith was injured in the line of duty and the injury was the "sole and direct cause of his death," according to the lawsuit.


Walls-Kaufman served a 60-day prison sentence after pleading guilty to a Capitol riot-related misdemeanor in January 2023, but he was pardoned in January. On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of cases for all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack.

More than 100 law-enforcement officers were injured during the riot. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died a day after engaging with the rioters. A medical examiner later determined he suffered a stroke and died of natural causes. Howard Liebengood, a Capitol police officer who responded to the riot, also died by suicide after the attack.

Erin Smith's quest isn't over. She applied for the National Law Enforcement Memorial to add her husband's name as a line-of-duty death. Weber said they're hoping for a decision soon.

Jury orders man to pay $500,000 for assaulting D.C. police officer who died by suicide after Capitol riot

The jury ordered that chiropractor David Walls-Kaufman must pay Erin Smith for assaulting her husband, Jeffrey Smith, inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

www.cbsnews.com

 

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Trump administration sues Maryland federal judges over order blocking removal of immigrants
BALTIMORE (AP) — The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against federal judges in Maryland over an order that blocks the immediate removal of any detained immigrant who requests a court hearing.

The unusual suit filed Tuesday against the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Maryland and the court's other judges underscores the administration's focus on immigration enforcement and ratchets up its fight with the judiciary.



At issue is an order signed by Chief Judge George L. Russell III and filed in May blocking the administration from immediately removing from the U.S. any immigrants who file paperwork with the Maryland district court seeking a review of their detention. The order blocks the removal until 4 p.m. on the second business day after the habeas corpus petition is filed.

In its suit, the Trump administration says such an automatic pause on removals violates a Supreme Court ruling and impedes the president's authority to enforce immigration laws.

“Defendants’ automatic injunction issues whether or not the alien needs or seeks emergency relief, whether or not the court has jurisdiction over the alien’s claims, and no matter how frivolous the alien’s claims may be,” the suit says. “And it does so in the immigration context, thus intruding on core Executive Branch powers.”



The suit names the U.S. and U.S. Department of Homeland Security as plaintiffs.

The Maryland district court had no comment, Chief Deputy Clerk David Ciambruschini said in an email.

“President Trump’s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

Associated Press, The Associated Press

 

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U.S. District Judge Tana Lin granted a partial injunction to 14 states suing the Department of Transportation over frozen funds for new vehicle chargers.

“In a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, Homer must cut short a tearful goodbye with his long-lost mother after her traveling companions protest that their ‘electric van only has 20 minutes of juice left,’" Lin wrote. “Some 26 years later, Congress sought to address … ‘range anxiety’: the unease experienced by electric vehicle (“EV”) drivers when they are unsure where the next charging station might be, and whether their car’s battery has sufficient charge to get them there.”


To that end, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, appropriating $5 billion to fund a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (“NEVI”) Formula Program “to build an electric vehicle charging infrastructure and to establish 'an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability.'” Congress then directed the Secretary of Transportation to distribute that money to the states and the District of Columbia between 2022 and 2026.

READ MORE: More than a dozen Republicans say they 'cannot support' Trump's bill due to this provision

But that’s not what Trump’s secretary of state did, the judge notes. States did their part by building infrastructure along highways and convenience centers, but in 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation disregarded Congress’s mandate. In February, the administration ordered states to stop spending NEVI money and halted new funding for EV charging stations. Newsweek reports this led 16 states to sue the administration, arguing that it was illegally withholding the funds and that the freeze had halted projects mid-progress.


Lin ruled the administration had overstepped its constitutional authority by ignoring a Congressional mandate and ordered funding be released for 14 of the states that sued.

“When the Executive Branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, and when an administrative agency acts contrary to law, it is the Court's responsibility to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power," Lin wrote.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta cheered the decision, saying “it is no secret that the Trump Administration is beholden to the fossil fuel agenda.”

READ MORE: How Trump manipulates his supporters — and the rest of America

“The administration cannot dismiss programs illegally, like the bipartisan Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula program, just so that the President’s Big Oil friends can continue basking in record-breaking profits,” Bonta said in a press statement.



Read the full Newsweek report at this link.

Judge busts Trump’s illegal freeze on state money with 'The Simpsons' quote

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Justice Department official nominated to become a federal appeals court judge said Wednesday that he never told department attorneys to ignore court orders, denying the account of a whistleblower who detailed a campaign to defy judges to carry out President Donald Trump's deportation plans.



Emil Bove's nomination for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has come under intense scrutiny after a fired department lawyer claimed in a complaint filed Tuesday that Bove used an expletive when he said during a meeting that the Trump administration might need to ignore judicial commands. Bove pushed back against suggestions from Democrats that the whistleblower’s claims make him unfit for the federal bench.

“I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee. He added: “I don’t think there’s any validity to the suggestion that that whistleblower complaint filed yesterday calls into question my qualifications to serve as a circuit judge.”

Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for Trump, has been at the forefront of some of the most contentious Justice Department actions since Trump's return to the White House, including the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He also accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the U.S. Capitol riot and ordered the firings of a group of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases.



Bove took criticism of his tenure head on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions “have generated controversy.” But Bove said he has been inaccurately portrayed as Trump's “henchman” and “enforcer” at the department.

“I am someone who tries to stand up for what I believe is right,” Bove said.

A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump's legal team during his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases brought by the Justice Department. If confirmed by the Senate, he'll serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Democrats said Bove has proven himself himself unfit for a lifetime appointment during his short tenure at the Justice Department, accusing him of abusing his power and putting his loyalties to Trump above all else.



“Bove has led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies," said Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee. "Having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he’s been rewarded with this lifetime nomination."

Bove's hearing came a day after the filing of a whistleblower complaint from a former Justice Department lawyer who was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison.

That lawyer, Erez Reuveni, described efforts by top Justice Department officials in the weeks before his firing to stonewall and mislead judges to carry out deportations championed by the White House.

Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump’s plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni said Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and “ignore any such order,” Reuveni's lawyers said in the filing.


Bove said he has “no recollection of saying anything of that kind.”

He also faced sharp questions about his ordering the dismissal of Adams' corruption case, which led to the resignation of a top prosecutor in New York and several other Justice Department officials. Daniel Sassoon, then-interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, cited her objections to what she called a political “quid pro quo” with Adams’ legal team for the mayor to enforce Trump’s immigration policies only if he was freed from the looming prosecution.

Bove dismissed claims of a quid pro quo as “simply false.”

“And it’s refuted by the record," Bove said. “Mayor Adams’ lawyers filed a letter on the public docket in that case that stated explicitly there was no quid pro quo. One of those lawyers — and they’re both respected members of the bar — stood up in court at a hearing in the case and said the same thing. And then, critically, Mayor Adams himself was sworn under oath at the hearing.”


Republicans on the committee portrayed Bove as the victim of a Democratic-led smear campaign, noting the whistleblower's claims surfaced just before Bove's confirmation hearing.

Testifying during a separate hearing Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi called the whistleblower's timing “suspect" and told lawmakers she stands by Bove.

During his time as a federal prosecutor in New York, Bove was involved in several high-profile cases, including a drug-trafficking case against the former Honduran president’s brother and those of a man who set off a pressure cooker device in Manhattan and a man who sent dozens of mail bombs to prominent targets across the country.

“Bove is unquestionably qualified for the role and has a career filled with accolades, both academically and throughout his legal career, that should make him a shoo-in for the Third Circuit,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.


Bove’s actions, however, rankled some fellow prosecutors and defense attorneys. In 2018, the federal public defender’s office compiled complaints about his behavior from defense attorneys and sent them to two top officials in the U.S. attorney’s office. About 18 months after the email was sent, Bove was promoted to be co-chief of the office’s national security and international narcotics unit.

Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press

Trump judicial nominee Bove denies advising Justice Department lawyers to ignore court orders

 

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