Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Education Department and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs. The administration said it would challenge the ruling.U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from carrying out plans announced in March that sought to work toward Trump’s goal to shut down the department. It marks a setback to one of the Republican president’s campaign promises.The ruling came in two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure...

A wicked Obama judge is so determined to force the Trump Administration to keep the worst possible illegal aliens in America that he is willing to criminally sanction officials who violate his outrageous order. And Team Trump is rightfully furious. As The New York Times reported, U.S District Court Judge Brian Murphy, an Obama appointee, ordered Trump administration officials to maintain custody of illegal aliens on a deportation flight that the invaders’ lawyers said was headed to South Sudan. Murphy claimed the move likely violated an injunction he issued in April. “Based on what I have been told,” he said,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that U.S. officials must retain custody and control of migrants apparently removed to South Sudan in case he orders their removals were unlawful. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts issued the ruling after an emergency hearing, after attorneys for immigrants said the Trump administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan — despite a court order restricting removals to other countries. Murphy said the government must “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other...

A Michigan judge struck down several abortion-related laws last week, including a 24-hour waiting period, mandatory informed consent requirements, and a law prohibiting non-physicians from committing abortions. Judge Sima Patel ruled that all three laws are now unconstitutional given the state’s adoption of an amendment that declared abortion to be a constitutional “right.” Following the amendment’s passage, Northland Family Planning Centers and a group called Medical Students for Choice filed a lawsuit calling for the overturning of the laws. In 2024, Patel placed a preliminary injunction on each of the laws. At that time, she said a 24-hour waiting period...

US District Court Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee, said to hell with the Supreme Court and still ordered the Trump DOJ to turn over documents related to its decision to revoke protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants. Judge Chen said the Supreme Court’s ruling today is not a factor and insisted on a deadline tonight for the Trump DOJ to turn over the documents. The US Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s block on President Trump’s order to revoke ‘protected status’ for hundreds of thousands of migrants living in the US. The high court...

A U.S. judge in New Mexico on Thursday dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants caught in a new military zone on the U.S.-Mexico border, marking a setback for Trump administration efforts to raise penalties for illegal crossings. Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Wormuth began filing the dismissals late on Wednesday, ruling migrants did not know they were entering the New Mexico military zone and therefore could not be charged, according to court documents. Assistant Federal Public Defender Amanda Skinner said Wormuth dismissed the charges against all migrants who made initial court appearances on Thursday. The migrants still face charges...

A magistrate judge warned US Attorney Alina Habba and ICE against ‘out-of-court’ statements about the case against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during a hearing on Friday. Public statements made by Alina Habba and ICE spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin following Ras Baraka’s arrest are at issue. The Mayor of Newark was arrested for criminal trespass on Friday after storming the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility. ..... Snip..... On Friday, Alina Habba said Mayor Baraka was taken into custody after he ignored multiple warnings from DHS agents. “The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations...

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt mass layoffs of federal workers for at least two weeks in a temporary restraining order issued Friday.A coalition of local governments, nonprofit organizations and labor unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, filed a lawsuit last month challenging an executive order issued Feb. 11 that instructed federal agency heads to prepare large-scale reductions in workforce.The AFGE-led coalition had argued that the president does not have the power to make that order. Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of...

A federal judge in Vermont on Friday released a Turkish Tufts University student detained in a Louisiana immigration center more than six weeks after she was arrested while walking along a street in a Boston suburb, allowing her to return to her studies. U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Burlington released Rumeysa Ozturk pending a final decision on her claim that she’s been illegally detained following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Details of her release and travel plans were not immediately available, and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

federal judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order that blocks the Trump administration from deporting illegal Asian migrants to the African country of Libya, or any other third world country. The move comes after lawyers filed an emergency motion earlier in the day, seeking to stop the deportations that were reportedly scheduled for sometime this week. The Trump administration has not formally commented on the plans. The lawyers claimed that the migrants, who came from Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam, among other places, were expected to be loaded onto a U.S. military aircraft and transported to Libya, according to...

On Monday, a federal judge in the Western District of Washington issued an order setting forth a "compliance framework" for the Trump administration to follow in order to adhere to his previously entered preliminary injunction. That framework will require the administration to begin processing roughly 12,000 refugees by next Monday. It's the latest development in a series of back-and-forth court rulings and moves that have begun to seem a bit like a Ping-Pong match. A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to immediately resettle some 12,000 refugees into the U.S. under a court order that partially blocks President...

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday indefinitely blocked the Trump Administration from deporting Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. In his order granting a preliminary injunction enjoining the enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act in his district, Judge Hellerstein said illegal aliens have the same due process rights as American citizens. “This nation was founded on the “self-evident” truths “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Declaration of Independence, at ¶ 2...

A district court judge, appointed by former President Joe Biden, is requiring President Donald Trump to bring roughly 12,000 refugees to the United States in a new court order issued this week. Judge Jamal Whitehead, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in 2023 by Biden, says Trump must admit thousands of refugees who had been approved for resettlement in the U.S. before he signed an executive order to halt the refugee resettlement program. “This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” Whitehead writes:...

judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to admit some 12,000 refugees into the United States under a court order partially blocking the president's efforts to suspend the nation's refugee admissions program. The order from U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead followed arguments from the Justice Department and refugee resettlement agencies over how to interpret a federal appeals court ruling that

Minnesota beaches may never be the same, following a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling this week overturning a woman’s indecent exposure misdemeanor conviction on the grounds that men, transgender individuals and breast cancer survivors are not held to the same standard. “Criminalizing the exposure of female — but not male — breasts does not provide Minnesotans with adequate notice as to the conduct the indecent exposure statute prohibits,” Associate Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote of the court’s decision. “Because a binary approach to breasts fails to recognize the more nuanced physical realities of human bodies, whether they are intersex, transgender, nonbinary,...

Corrupt Obama judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of Perkins Coie law firm on Friday and permanently blocked President Trump’s executive order. President Trump previously stripped security clearances of the employees at DNC law firm Perkins Coie. Recall that Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid law firm Perkins Coie more than $1 million to hire oppo research firm Fusion GPS to peddle the bogus ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier during the 2016 election. Former British spy Christopher Steele compiled over a dozen memos alleging the Russians had blackmail on Trump and that his associates were conspiring with the Kremlin to win the 2016...

The ruling is a blow to Trump’s deportation efforts and permanently bars removals under the Alien Enemies Act in South Texas.A Trump-appointed federal judge ruled Thursday that the president exceeded his authority by invoking the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants, dealing a blow to the administration’s deportation efforts and permanently barring such removals in South Texas. In a 36-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Brownsville, Texas, rejected Trump’s declarations that the United States was being invaded by a Venezuelan gang to justify using the act to deport migrants without a hearing. He said the...

A federal judge in West Texas halted the deportation of suspected Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. US District Judge David Briones, a Clinton appointee, on Friday ordered the release of two suspected TdA members. The judge admonished DOJ lawyers and said they “have not demonstrated they have any lawful basis” to keep the couple detained. The couple, Julio Cesar Sanchez Puentes and Luddis Norelia Sanchez Garcia, arrived in the US from Mexico in 2022 and were granted temporary protected status (TPS) by the Biden Regime. President Trump terminated the TPS program, and the couple was...

A lefty Wisconsin jurist is threatening not to hold court following Friday’s arrest of Milwaukee judge for allegedly helping a Mexican illegal migrant evade federal immigration officers. Monica Isham, a circuit judge Sawyer County, defended Judge Hannah Dugan Saturday, claiming in an email to other state judges that she “has no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by [Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents] and sent to a concentration camp,” Wisconsin Right Now first reported. Isham, who in 2023 became the first Native American elected to the county’s circuit court, also threatened to “start raising bail...

...A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.... ...officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information. “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that...