Free Republic

Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) filed articles of impeachment Friday against Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer after his controversial decision to block the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing a crucial Treasury payment system. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Trump-hating New York Attorney General Letitia James and 18 Democrat state attorneys general infuriated over Trump’s efforts to downsize government. As The Gateway Pundit recently reported, Crane announced last week that he was drafting the articles against the far-left Judge, calling his decision a “threat to democracy.”

Several House Republicans are preparing articles of impeachment against the federal judges who are blocking some of President Donald Trump's and Elon Musk's key policies. judges have blocked Trump's executive order that limits transgender care for minors, and his administration's plan to reduce the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by placing 2,200 employees on administrative leave. Another federal judge blocked Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the Treasury Department payment records. Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane is preparing articles of impeachment against U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing the Treasury...

New York federal Judge Paul Engelmayer’s temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s access to Treasury documents happened so fast it’s unlikely he carefully read the case filings. The filings from the 19 suing Democrat state attorneys generals were so voluminous, and Engelmayer’s order was entered so quickly, that it could not possibly have been the product of reasoned judicial analysis and reflection. The stench is so bad, questions of possible corruption must be answered.Engelmayer is the first judge ever to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the president of the United States that also forbids a cabinet secretary...

Over the weekend, an Obama-appointed judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive Treasury Department data. While the media frames this as a limited restriction on political appointees and special government employees, the reality appears far more sweeping. Judge Paul Engelmayer’s ruling explicitly bars all political appointees—including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—from Treasury payment records and financial systems, restricting access to career civil servants (essentially the Deep State) within the Bureau of Fiscal Services. This unprecedented move effectively prevents the Treasury secretary from overseeing his own department’s financial data, raising serious concerns about executive...

In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.” After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch...

The Trump administration has filed an emergency motion to vacate an ex parte temporary restraining order issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. This order egregiously interferes with the executive branch’s operations by limiting access to crucial Treasury Department systems. On Saturday, Obama appointee Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued an ex parte temporary restraining order that restricted access to Treasury systems exclusively to “civil servants,” explicitly excluding “all political appointees” from accessing these systems. Ex parte means the “Trump administration lawyers weren’t given notice, weren’t allowed to argue, and weren’t even in the room....

The Trump administration is making an urgent push to end a court order barring top officials’ access to the federal government’s massive payment system operated by the Treasury Department, saying the “remarkable intrusion” is unconstitutional and should be “dissolved immediately.” “Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in the 11-page filing, calling the order “impermissible” and “anti-constitutional.” The attorneys are asking Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas to quickly end or modify the order to ensure Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his...

A federal judge dropped a bombshell on Saturday, issuing an order that no only temporarily blocks the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing essential data on federal payments but also bars Treasury officials from accessing data managed by the agency. According to the order, only “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations” can access the data, while “all political appointees, special government employees,...

Elon Musk called for the impeachment of an Obama-era federal judge who ruled that President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency can't access personal and financial data stored at the Treasury Department. U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer's order issued early Saturday morning restricted access to Treasury Department payment systems and other data to "all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department." Trump appointed Musk to head advisory DOGE, which has been tasked with finding ways to streamline government and reduce spending. Engelmayer's ruling temporarily prevents DOGE from doing some work...

Donald Trump's ambitious plan to overhaul the wasteful federal government is rapidly becoming mired in the 'lawfare' that plagued his first administration. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been tearing through Washington at warp speed since the inauguration. His crack team of young nerds has left bureaucrats sobbing outside the shuttered USAID offices and infuriated cantankerous career civil servants who guard the Treasury Department's obscure payments system. But now Trump is facing his first test and the opposition's game plan is familiar: wage war through the courts with Attorney Generals backed by the Hungarian billionaire George Soros and...

In a stunning and sweeping emergency injunction that has even stunned the people who demanded it, a Manhattan-based District Judge has just removed Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent from his authority over the Treasury Department; blocked any political appointee from accessing records within the Treasury Department; blocked any “special appointee” of President Trump from records within Treasury; and demanded that all information previously extracted be destroyed. The emergency injunction was signed by District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan, determined without any input from the Trump administration and applies until Friday, February 14, 2025, when U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas...

o be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following: - Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible. - All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING! - The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known...

This ruling, concocted without legal precedent or constitutional justification, is nothing short of judicial sabotage. Worse, it was issued ex parte—meaning Trump administration lawyers weren’t given notice, weren’t allowed to argue, and weren’t even in the room. Only Democrat attorneys general were heard, ensuring a predetermined outcome. Engelmayer’s order is legally indefensible. He cites no statutory basis because none exists. He offers no constitutional rationale because the Constitution directly contradicts him. Instead, he fabricates a fiction: that the duly appointed Treasury Secretary is nothing more than a ceremonial figurehead, akin to a powerless monarch, while unelected bureaucrats—who answer to no...

A federal judge, citing a risk of “irreparable harm,” has temporarily restricted Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing a critical Treasury Department payment system.. US District Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered the destruction of any downloaded information from the payment system by anyone given access to it since January 20,

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday struck down a new Trump administration rule that would have allowed health care clinicians to refuse to provide abortions for moral or religious reasons. U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York rejected the federal rule after women's groups, health organizations and multiple states sued the Department of Health and Human Services, arguing the exemptions were unconstitutional. snip "The refusal of care rule was an unlawful attempt to allow health care providers to openly discriminate and refuse to provide necessary health care to patients based on providers’...

A federal judge on Wednesday agreed with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's statement that pro-lifers “have no place” in New York.The judge then moved to make that recommendation a legal reality.The Washington Examiner reported that a federal judge struck down a Trump administration rule that would have allowed for healthcare workers to refuse to provide or refer to sterilizations, abortions, and medically assisted suicide if doing so violated their faith.

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday struck down a Trump administration rule that would make it easier for health care providers to refuse to perform services, such as abortions, that conflict with their religious beliefs. District Judge Paul Engelmayer invalidated the rule on multiple grounds, including a finding that it violated the Constitution’s spending clause by allowing the administration to cut off funds approved by Congress to providers who do not comply with the rule by forcing employees to perform services to which they object. A number of states, including New York, as well as Planned Parenthood and...

A federal judge on Wednesday voided the Trump administration’s “conscience rule” that would have allowed health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations or other procedures they disagree with on religious or moral grounds. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan declared the so-called “conscience rule” unconstitutional in a 147-page decision stemming from a lawsuit brought by New York and nearly two dozen other mostly Democratic states and municipalities. The rule had been set to go into effect later this month.