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A federal judge in Manhattan has largely blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at immigration courthouses in New York City and across the country, ruling the Trump administration policy authorizing the arrests was invalid. The decision indefinitely extends a temporary judicial stay issued in May that mostly paused ICE arrests at the city’s immigration courthouses. It also follows a similar ruling by a federal district court in California that largely banned such arrests across the country. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said federal officials were “arbitrary and capricious” in widely permitting ICE arrests at immigration courthouses...

A federal appeals court Wednesday morning halted the execution of the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row about an before it was scheduled to occur. In a last-minute decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District said it needed to review claims that Christa Pike’s legal team made in a bid to stop her execution. “The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits,” the court said. It’s unclear how...

A federal judge has ordered the White House to immediately restore access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. NBC News’ Nikki Battiste and Gary Grumbach report on the judge’s ruling.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Texas to install air conditioning in all of its prisons, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must come up with a plan to install air conditioning by the end of 2029 in every prison in the state where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right not to be given “cruel and...

A federal judge with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction to block the U.S. government from conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests in the district unless the arrestee is deemed likely to escape before a warrant can be procured. "Defendants are enjoined from enforcing their policy and practice of making warrantless civil immigration arrests in this District without a prearrest individualized determination by the arresting agent or officer of probable cause that the person being arrested is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, as required by 8 U.S.C. 1357(a)(2) and...

Key Points * A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the board of the Kennedy Center from inscribing the name of President Donald Trump on the performing arts center’s main building to honor him and from renaming the center’s campus after Trump. * “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his order in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ======================================================================= A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from inscribing President Donald...

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the Postal Service from inserting itself into the election process while litigation continues. ================================================================ A federal judge Thursday blocked a Postal Service regulation that would exert control over mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections in the latest setback on the issue for President Donald Trump. The recently finalized measure would implement a key provision of Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots that would add a new level of bureaucracy to the elections process, which is typically administered by states. The executive order directed the U.S. Postal Service to, among...

Indira Talwani (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee) It’s official. Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, the same Boston activist who spent the last two months trying to kill President Trump’s mail-in ballot security order, has now been forced to lift her nationwide injunction. The Justice Department asked her to reconsider after the Supreme Court slapped down her other block on Monday. On Wednesday she folded. In a nine-page order, Talwani conceded that, after Trump v. California, the League of Women Voters plaintiffs are “not likely to prevail as to ripeness” unless they rewrite their complaint now that the Postal Service has...

A U.S. judge on Friday struck down, opens new tab a Trump administration policy suspending the issuance of immigrant visas to ​applicants from 75 countries, saying that the policy exceeded Secretary of ‌State Marco Rubio's statutory authority. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan said the policy that the State Department announced in January was "patently unlawful" and ran afoul of federal ​immigration law, which explicitly stripped the secretary of state of ​authority over consular officers' processing of immigrant visas. "The Policy, which categorically ⁠prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of ​the applicant, represents a direct...

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...