Free Republic

A federal judge on Friday blocked President Trump’s executive order to strip federal workers of their ‘collective bargaining’ rights. Last month President Trump issued an executive order blocking hundreds of thousands of federal workers in HHS, Veterans, Treasury and other federal agencies. The National Treasury Employees Union sued the Trump Administration in response to the executive order. US District Judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton appointee, blasted Trump earlier this week during a hearing on this case. “So, he’s willing to be kind to those that work with him, but those that have sued him, those that have filed grievances, those...

Two Democrat-appointed federal judges have extended temporary blocks on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport criminal illegal aliens. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has extended an April 9 order for another two weeks that bars the Trump administration from deporting illegal aliens being held in Southern District of New York without first providing them with an opportunity for a hearing. During a hearing Tuesday, Hellerstein, a President Bill Clinton appointee, criticized the Trump administration for its approach to deportations. “This is not the Inquisition, it’s not medieval times,” Hellerstein said. Until the New York court...

A federal judge in Maryland has granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in error, by Monday.

President Trump’s immigration policy, like most of his foreign policy, is saturated with references to his campaign slogan “America First,” and a federal judge this week said it shows illegal and racist “animus” toward immigrants.Judge Edward Chen blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking a special deportation amnesty for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants, at least in part because Secretary Kristi Noem justified the decision by citing Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda. Judge Chen, an Obama appointee to the court in Northern California, said the term had an “inference of animus given the historical connotation of that phrase.”...

A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating funding for legal counsel for unaccompanied migrant minors. Appointed by former President Joe Biden, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday that will stop the Trump administration from ending the funding while the merits of the underlying case play out. In her Tuesday order, Martínez-Olguín said that advocates had raised legitimate questions about whether the administration violated the 2008 law, warranting a return to the status quo while the case continues. The Trump administration on March 21 terminated a contract...

Another black-robed tyrant has invoked his unearned ‘authority’ to sabotage President Trump’s America-first agenda. As Reuters reported, a U.S. judge in San Francisco on Monday barred the Trump administration from revoking deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants here in America under temporary protected status. His ruling applies nationwide. TPS status for these migrants was scheduled to end on April 7. They were also set to lose their work permits on April 2. Senior District Judge Edward Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, slammed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in his ruling for supposedly stereotyping Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries while slobbering...

As Beth Brelje recently reported in The Federalist, Five of the fifteen judges sitting on the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia were born outside the United States. All five of those foreign-born judges somehow managed to get selected to rule on controversial Trump cases. All five of those five judges had zero experience as a judge before being appointed to one of the most influential courts in the land. The recently infamous James Boasberg, chief judge of the D.C. District Court, is one of the 15 principal judges on that court. There are an additional 10 older,...

In recent years, the term “lawfare” has gained prominence in legal and political discourse, referring to the strategic use of legal proceedings to harm, intimidate, or silence an adversary rather than to pursue justice in good faith, most notably brought to public awareness in the multi-year legal pursuit of President Donald Trump. Currently, the unprecedented plethora of cases against the Trump administration has the public and the Republican House of Representatives crying “lawfare,” instigated in a conscious effort to interfere with the president’s electoral mandate and his constitutional prerogatives. As this phenomenon becomes more prevalent, a critical question arises: If...

A second federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked President Trump’s ban on transgender troops. In January President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively. US District Judge Benjamin Hale Settle in Washington State, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on Thursday evening. Judge Settle, a George W. Bush appointee, said the Trump DOJ’s arguments have not been persuasive.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Labor from implementing parts of President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at curbing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts among federal contractors and grant recipients. Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois halted the Labor Department from requiring federal contractors or grant recipients from certifying that they don't operate any programs in violation of Trump's anti-DEI executive orders. [snip] The organization argued that the president’s executive orders on DEI are so broad and vague that the organization had no way to ensure compliance, and...

A federal judge ordered White House officials involved in a group chat on military strikes in Yemen to preserve the messages after a bombshell report revealed that they potentially shared classified information. US District Judge James Boasberg ordered members of President Donald Trump's national security team to keep any messages sent or received over the Signal messaging app between 11 and 15 March.

But other democracies provide a roadmap for courts to prevail over attacks from the executive branch. Just two months in, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is aggressively challenging judicial constraints on its power, risking a showdown—and constitutional crisis—in which the executive branch seeks to make court orders optional. This month, the U.S. executive branch blatantly defied a federal judge’s order to temporarily halt the deportation of migrants to El Salvador. The president himself called for the impeachment of the judge who issued the order, along with other judges. In one of the 139 legal cases filed against the Trump administration...

The people’s deference to the judiciary is not unlimited. The courts can weaken their moral authority quickly with over-reaching rulings, particularly when those rulings reek of personal animus toward one man — i.e., “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — rather than rational decision-making. The so-called “resistance” will play well to the “elites” but not to the people who put the president into office to do the very things that are being resisted. Americans intuitively understand that the judiciary’s primary role is to protect the rights of American citizens, not the “rights” of federal bureaucracies and foreign interests. They also understand that the...

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND AMERICAN FEDERATION OF * TEACHERS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civ. No. DLB-25-0430 SCOTT BESSENT, et al., Defendants. ORDER For the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion issued today, it is this 24th day of March, 2025 hereby ORDERED: 1. The plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ECF 59, is GRANTED as follows: a. The U.S. Department of Education (“Education”); Denise L. Carter, the Acting Secretary of Education; and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys are ENJOINED from disclosing the personally identifiable information of the plaintiffs and the...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 Yesterday Biden appointee Jia Cobb granted Norm Eisen/Mark Zaid request for expedited discovery in their lawsuit against Trump adm over inquiry of FBI employees who worked on Jan 6 cases. So another judge now decides these partisan lawfare thugs are entitled to info about the internal workings of the White House and DOJ. 10:26 AM · Mar 23, 2025

The Supreme Court has become a paper tiger, failing to hold defiant lower courts accountable when they make rogue decisions. The Supreme Court has the responsibility to make sure its subsidiary courts follow its directives — often by taking more cases, and making their precedent unambiguous. Arrogant, active, and open defiance on some of the most important issues, however, has been the norm from these lower courts for years, and a majority on the high court has persistently refused to stop them. The judicial coup is thwarting the American people, and the agenda they voted for, in two ways: By...

That escalated quickly. On Thursday, Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg rejected the Trump administration's Justice Department filing about the illegal alien deportation flights to our ally, El Salvador, in what's being characterized as an "angry order." He is threatening to hold them in contempt. As we previously wrote, the judge ordered the planes to turn around mid-flight: As RedState’s Ward Clark reported Saturday, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua which has been terrorizing cities across the country—and then the administration sent at least one planeload of members of...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 James Boasberg, along with 16 DC judges, signed off on the unlawful use of 1512c2--the corporate fraud obstruction statute--against J6ers. He presided over 70 J6 cases, both guilty pleas and conviction at trial. In nearly every instance, Boasberg imposed prison time even for the petty offense of "parading" in the Capitol. He sent 60-year-old Sandra Weyer, a woman from Pennsylvania who committed no violence on Jan 6, to 14 months in federal prison on the unlawful 1512c2 count. After denying several defense motions including change of venue, Boasberg convicted Cynthia Ballenger after a brief bench trial...

There is still time for the Supreme Court to avert an unnecessary constitutional crisis created by litigants and their handpicked judge seeking to control the executive branch. ====================================================================== “It is DECLARED that plaintiff Hampton Dellinger is the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel,” and he “shall be the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel for the remainder of his five-year term unless and until he is removed in accordance with 5 U.S.C. §1211(b).” Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a Barack Obama appointee, entered that ruling late Saturday evening in a two-page order. Judge Berman Jackson’s order then...

Federal judges in the District of Columbia are expressing disdain for President Trump’s J6 pardons and are threatening to resist DOJ requests to dismiss open cases. It should come as no surprise that Washington, D.C. judges who have presided over the prosecutions of Trump supporters strongly object to the pardons and commutations made by the President on his first day in office. Their outrage came after the Trump DOJ requested that the judges dismiss cases that remain open.. Trump’s pardons, issued on January 20, were among his first official actions in office. They granted unconditional clemency to over 1,500 J6...