Free Republic

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...

March 26 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday refused to pause a judge's ruling requiring the administration of President Donald Trump to reinstate more than 17,000 workers at six agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump's purge of the federal workforce. A 2-1 panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Trump administration had failed to establish a federal judge erred by finding that agencies likely could not fire workers at the direction of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for the federal government. The Trump administration...

The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal Monday to the Supreme Court asking it to halt a recent lower court ruling to rehire some federal workers laid off at federal agencies. The administration said that the ruling should be put on hold because the judge didn't have authority to order 16,000 probationary employees be re-hired, according to The Associated Press. The order was from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco. The agencies at which the layoffs occurred were departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The Trump Administration agenda was stopped in its tracks this week after a federal judge appointed himself the new President of the United States. "There's nothing we can do," said legal experts. "He's a federal judge." Sources confirmed that Judge Mortimer Dithers of the Northern District of California granted himself all the powers of the executive branch in an emergency move to stop Trump. "Last night, the Constitution appeared to me in a dream and told me to do this," said Judge Dithers. "You can't argue with that. Also, my word is on this is law...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The Trump Administration agenda was stopped in its tracks this week after a federal judge appointed himself the new President of the United States. "There's nothing we can do," said legal experts. "He's a federal judge." Sources confirmed that Judge Mortimer Dithers of the Northern District of California granted himself all the powers of the executive branch in an emergency move to stop Trump. "Last night, the Constitution appeared to me in a dream and told me to do this," said Judge Dithers. "You can't argue with that. Also, my word is on this is law...

“The words that I give you today should not be taken as some kind of wild and crazy judge in San Francisco has said that the administration cannot engage in a reduction in force. I’m not saying that at all,” Alsup noted as he issued his ruling. “Of course, if he does, it has to comply with the statutory requirements: the Reduction In Force act, the Civil Service Act, the Constitution, maybe other statutes,” the judge continued. “But it can be done.”

A federal judge on Thursday ordered federal agencies to reinstate tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired amid President Donald Trump’s turbulent effort to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. U.S. District Judge William Alsup described the mass firings as a “sham” strategy by the government’s central human resources office to sidestep legal requirements for reducing the federal workforce. Alsup, a San Francisco-based appointee of President Bill Clinton, ordered the Departments of Defense, Treasury, Energy, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs to “immediately” offer all fired probationary employees their jobs back. The Office of Personnel Management, the judge said, had made...

March 13 (Reuters) - A California federal judge on Thursday ordered six U.S. agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who were fired as part of President Donald Trump's purge of the federal workforce. The ruling made by U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco applies to the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

The Trump administration could be sanctioned by a federal judge later this week after lawyers with the Department of Justice advised a federal judge Tuesday evening that they will not make a top administration official available for sworn testimony. U.S. District Judge Charles Alsup had sought to have the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Charles Ezell, testify on Thursday about the mass firing of probationary employees. But the DOJ said Tuesday that they would not make Ezell available for testimony. By making Ezell unavailable, DOJ attorneys also withdrew his sworn affidavit, a move that Judge Charles...

In his ruling, Alsup ordered OPM to rescind a January 20 memo and a February 14 email directing agencies to identify probationary employees who are not "mission-critical" and terminate them... "Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government. They come in at a low level and work their way up. That's how we renew ourselves," said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton.

A newly amended lawsuit challenges a threat by Elon Musk to federal workers...Musk in a social media post had warned those workers to respond to an email demanding them to submit a list of their accomplishments over the last week, or face a forced "resignation." ...The suit in California federal court comes amid confusion and controversy over whether employees must respond to that email from the Office of Personnel Management.

Mob rule on college campuses has suffered a serious legal setback. The Jewish professor suing the California College of the Arts in San Francisco for threatening to fire her because she gently reproached pro-Hamas students won a significant legal battle earlier this month when a federal judge ruled that the case can proceed, rejecting a motion to dismiss from the College.Hopefully, the ruling is going to prove a cautionary note to college administrators who coddle pro-Hamas students and resort to railroading any professors who dare challenge them. United States District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr., ruled that the professor, Karen...

A California judge denied BART’s requests to overturn the verdict, saying the agency failed to show an undue hardship for not granting religious exemption.. A federal judge in California has rejected an effort by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $7.8 million to six former employees who were fired for refusing to comply with the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds. In a Dec. 30 order, Judge William A. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California acknowledged minor “imperfections” in the jury trial—including flawed instructions to the jurors—and...

A federal judge has turned away allegations that billionaire Elon Musk violated the law when he started giving $1 million away to registered voters. California resident Aaron Greenspan in a lawsuit filed over the summer accused Musk of violating state laws and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. In a recent emergency motion, Greenspan, who founded the company PlainSite, said Musk’s newly announced million-dollar giveaways to voters in swing states violated federal law that prohibits paying or offering to pay people to either register to vote or vote.

The US and France leading a group of nations calling for 21-day ceasefire involving Israel and Hezbollah... Word tonight that New York Mayor Eric Adams is under federal indictment... The Lebanese Health Ministry reporting at least 72 killed and hundreds wounded in Israeli strikes... Russia updating the rules for nuclear war. President Vladimir Putin speaking tonight... In the Dutch capital city The Hague an office building converted so it can receive migrants... 41.2 million people in Canada as of July 1st...1.2 million added to Canada's population in just one year... Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party government surviving its...

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has rejected a request by Democrat primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a temporary restraining order preventing Google-owned YouTube from censoring his content. Despite legacy media fears that tech platforms are relaxing their censorship efforts in response to Elon Musk’s changes at Twitter/X, YouTube recently doubled down on its “medical misinformation” policy, which it has used as a pretext to censor RFK Jr., who is Joe Biden’s closest competitor in the Democrat party primary, on several occasions. "The Court finds that the First Amendment claim is unlikely to succeed...

Administration has 14 days to appeal ruling ... The Biden administration was dealt a major blow in its efforts to control the ongoing border crisis on Tuesday when a federal judge blocked a rule introduced in May that makes migrants ineligible for asylum if they have entered illegally and failed to take advantage of expanded lawful pathways set up by the federal government. Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California blocked the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule in response to a lawsuit from a coalition of left-wing immigration groups, which claimed the rule...

In separate pleadings, Black Knight and Intercontinental Exchange asked a federal court judge to declare the Federal Trade Commission's structure unconstitutional. The filings, both made on April 25, were in response to the FTC seeking an injunction against their merger in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. Now, both Black Knight and Intercontinental Exchange, are seeking their own injunctive relief against the FTC. These latest pleadings make similar separation of power arguments that were included in their responses made on March 20 to the FTC's filing for an administrative hearing to quash the...