Free Republic

A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president. The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the...

A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration’s push to attach anti-DEI strings to federal grant money. The court ruled this week that the executive branch overstepped its constitutional authority by imposing the conditions on a group of West Coast cities and counties. U.S. District Judge William Orrick granted a preliminary injunction Thursday barring the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and the Interior from enforcing the contested conditions against 11 local governments, concluding in a 68-page order that the restrictions likely run afoul of both the separation-of-powers doctrine and the Administrative Procedure Act. “What defendants seek to do...

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the implementation of key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting, declaring the plans to intervene in state-run elections unconstitutional. Trump’s March executive order directed the creation of federal lists of voters and asked the Postal Service to only deliver mail ballots to certain people on those lists. The ruling to stop enforcing the executive order came from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. The decision is a blow to Trump, though an expected one, ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. Election experts...

A federal judge is again directing the Justice Department to formally address whether the Trump administration's "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is dead, as the agency has claimed. The order, filed Wednesday by District Judge Leonie Brinkema, comes after the Justice Department refused to issue a signed declaration verifying the $1.8 billion fund was not moving forward. In her order, Brinkema said she is not satisfied with the DOJ's contention that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's recent testimony before Congress is proof enough that the fund is dead. "That the defendants have refused to accord a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their representations...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday blocked the Trump administration from immediately moving forward with its plan to dramatically slash the bloated workforce at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by roughly two-thirds. This is the latest chapter in the ongoing war between President Trump’s mandate to drain the swamp and the entrenched bureaucracy that refuses to die. The D.C. Circuit granted the administration’s motion to send the case back to the district court for further review of an earlier injunction, but they flat-out refused to lift the stay preventing the workforce reductions...

U.S. District Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz threw out subpoenas against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other officials regarding immigration. “This course of events- in and of itself-establishes beyond reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws,” wrote Schiltz. “And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.” President Donald Trump and his administration initiated...

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from implementing a voter-screening database that combined citizenship records with Social Security information. The ruling argued the effort violated federal privacy protections and resulted in inaccurate information being shared with states. In a 75-page decision, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan halted the administration’s revised SAVE database, a system developed by the Department of Homeland Security as part of an effort to strengthen election integrity and identify non-citizens on voter rolls. “The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to...

A federal judge on Monday quashed grand jury subpoenas issued to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other Minnesota officials. US District Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee said the subpoenas were retaliatory. The Justice Department in January issued subpoenas to Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and other far-left Minnesota officials. The DOJ previously launched a criminal investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and far-left Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for interfering with ICE operations. According to CBS News, the investigation centered around public statements made by Walz and Frey....

A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the Trump administration to restore all signs that were changed or removed at national parks across the country as part of President Donald Trump’s controversial directive last year. In a scathing 63-page ruling on Friday, Judge Angel Kelley wrote, “Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths.” Kelley, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ordered that the restoration be complete by...

(Note: I re-edited this and removed all the time stamping from the YouTube rolling transcript so errors may be present.) The Supreme Court just issued a 6-3 emergency ruling that's sending shock waves through Washington and every state capital right now. This decision could fundamentally reshape federal power versus state sovereignty. THE EMERGENCY RULING BREAKDOWN The emergency ruling breakdown. Here's what actually went down late last night. The Supreme Court released a 6-3 emergency decision that directly challenges how federal courts have been operating for the past two decades. The majority opinion makes it clear that lower court judges no...

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to find the money to fully fund food stamps for 42 million low-income Americans in November by Friday, in a rebuke to the government’s plan to only provide reduced aid during the shutdown. US district judge John J McConnell Jr criticized the administration’s plan to partly fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits in November, saying it had failed to comply with an order he issued on Saturday requiring the government to ensure Americans received full or partial benefits no later than Wednesday. He also said the administration...

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to restore about $2.2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, despite finding the Ivy League school was “plagued by antisemitism.” Regardless of antisemitism concerns, Boston-based District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the federal grants awarded to Harvard were unlawfully terminated by President Trump. Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, determined there was “more than sufficient” evidence indicating the Trump administration “impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government’s demands.” The Trump administration “specifically and repeatedly linked the coordinated funding cuts to Harvard’s decision to ‘fight,’” Burroughs...

CNN — A federal judge on Friday found that the Department of Homeland Security has been making arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause and ordered the department to stop detaining individuals based solely on race, spoken language or occupation.

A federal judge in New Hampshire granted class-action status to a lawsuit seeking to protect babies who would be denied birthright citizenship by the Trump administration and granted a temporary block of the order restricting birthright citizenship from going into effect throughout the country. The suit was brought on behalf of a pregnant immigrant, immigrant parents and their infants and had sought class action status for all babies around the country who would be affected by Trump’s executive order and their parents. Cody Wofsy, the lead attorney on the case with the American Civil Liberties Union, argued for class-action status...

A federal judge has written a tentative decision that sides with the anti-American ACLU’s plaintiffs and will block Trump’s Department of Homeland Security agents from raiding Home Depots, car washes and other places in the Los Angeles area (7 counties in the Central District of California) unless they have reasonable suspicion that there is a violation of immigration laws. According to Fox News, US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, a Biden appointee, has written a tentative decision and it is still subject to change. The judge wrote her tentative ruling as leftists attack ICE agents during an immigration raid at...

AP) — A federal judge said Wednesday that an order by President Donald Trump suspending asylum access at the southern border was unlawful, throwing into doubt one of the key pillars of the president's plan to crack down on migration at the southern border. But he put the ruling on hold for two weeks to give the government time to appeal. In an order Jan. 20, Trump declared that the situation at the southern border constitutes an invasion of America and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it...

Remember when judges just followed the law? Those days seem long gone! Across America, liberal judges have been making up rules as they go along. They’ve blocked deportations, rewrote immigration policies, and acted like they run the country. But what happens when judges break the rules themselves? Who watches the watchmen? This question is now front and center as one group of federal judges faces something they never expected – being on the receiving end of a lawsuit! ... The Trump administration’s Department of Justice just dropped a bombshell. They sued all 15 federal district court judges in Maryland over...

In a sweeping ruling, the Supreme Court limited the ability of federal judges to block executive actions throughout the country through nationwide injunctions, greatly affecting how parties seek judicial relief going forward. The court’s 6-3 ruling Friday, with all six GOP-appointed justices in the majority, deals a significant blow to legal challenges against President Donald Trump’s extreme executive orders and other actions, many of which have been blocked or temporarily put on hold through nationwide injunctions. Nationwide, or universal, injunctions prevent the government from enforcing a law, regulation, or policy across the entire U.S. — not just against the specific...

A federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump acted illegally when he seized control of California’s National Guard during ICE-related riots in Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer issued the decision Thursday, siding with Governor Gavin Newsom and ordering Trump to return control of the Guard to the state "forthwith." "His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Breyer wrote. "He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith." "Federalism is not optional," the...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders in grant funding requirements that LGBTQ+ organizations say are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said Monday that the federal government cannot force recipients to halt programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of transgender people in order to receive grant funding. The order will remain in effect while the legal case continues, although government lawyers will likely appeal. The funding provisions “reflect an effort to censor constitutionally protected speech and services promoting DEI and...