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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 federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's sweeping overhaul of the federal government. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, came after a hearing Friday in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions, nonprofits and local governments. The plaintiffs argue in their complaint that President Trump's efforts to "radically restructure and dismantle the federal government" without any authorization from Congress violate the Constitution. Illston agreed with the plaintiffs, asserting in the hearing that Supreme Court precedent makes clear that while the president does have the authority to seek changes...

A federal judge on Friday issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) blocking the Trump Administration’s effort to overhaul and reorganize 20 agencies in the Executive Branch. In February, President Trump implemented an executive order to completely overhaul the Executive Branch through the work of DOGE. US District Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, said in order for President Trump to make such large-scale overhauls, he needs approval from Congress. “It is the prerogative of presidents to pursue new policy priorities and to imprint their stamp on the federal government. But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must...

A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Donald Trump's executive orders were unconstitutional. But Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said this was essentially what government lawyers argued during Trump’s first term when the Republican issued a similar order. “Their well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017,” Orrick wrote, citing the executive orders as well as directives from Bondi, other federal agencies and Justice Department lawsuits filed against Chicago and New York....

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.