Progress

A federal judge declined to issue an order Friday evening blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, concluding he lacks the authority to issue a nationwide order after the Supreme Court tossed his order earlier this month.

 

Lawyers with the ACLU had asked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to issue a temporary order blocking any imminent AEA deportations, saying the Trump administration was actively busing dozens of men to an airport in Texas to be deported.

 

Boasberg said he was “sympathetic” to the concern about deportation flights resuming imminently, but he said he lacks the authority to issue a nationwide temporary restraining order barring such deportations.

Good.

An immigration judge ruled Friday that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported on grounds that he threatens foreign policy, as alleged by the Trump administration.

 

[…]

 

While a student at Columbia University, Khalil was part of a leadership group protesting the war in Gaza. Khalil took part in negotiations with school administrators demanding the institution cut ties with Israel and divest from Israeli companies. Khalil finished his graduate studies at Columbia in December and is set to graduate in the spring.

 

Khalil — whose wife is about to give birth to their first child — was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his Columbia housing in March.

 

[…]

 

The government has argued, under an obscure 1952 federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act, that it believes migrants are deportable “if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

I love how any law with which the reporter disagrees is deemed “obscure.” Most of our laws were written a while ago and there are so dang many of them that most of them could be deemed “obscure.” But it’s still the law and it is very clear that the Secretary of State has this arbitrary authority.

Good. It’s unlikely that it will be able to get out of the Senate, but this is a rational bill. I would remind Democrats that this cuts both ways. If we allow pissant district judges to exercise a veto power over an entire branch of government, the chaos they inflict on our nation will swing against Democrats when they are back in power.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed legislation Wednesday mostly along party lines that limits the authority of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders, as Republicans react to several court rulings against the Trump administration.

 

In many cases, the courts are questioning whether the firings of federal workers, freezing of federal funds and shuttering of long-running federal offices are unlawful actions by the executive branch and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

 

The pace of nationwide injunctions has certainly increased during Donald Trump’s presidency. Republicans are arguing that the increase is the result of “activist liberal judges.” Democrats counter that the courts are simply striking down illegal executive orders and actions from the Trump administration. They also note that some of the judges issuing the injunctions were nominated by Republican presidents.

 

The bill passed by a vote of 219-213. It limits the scope of injunctive relief ordered by a district judge to those parties before the court, rather than applying the relief nationally. But the bill is unlikely to advance through the Senate, where at least some Democratic support would be needed.

This is getting more and more ridiculous.

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the White House cannot bar Associated Press reporters and photographers from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other secure spaces where journalists from other media outlets are admitted.

 

District Court Judge Trevor McFadden in an order said that the White House’s current blocking access to AP journalists to those tightly controlled spaces with President Donald Trump is “contrary to the First Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution.

Of course the President has that right – just as the judge has the right to restrict who enters his courtroom. The notion that allowing one member of the media to be present obligates Trump to allow any and all members of the media is ridiculous and unworkable. These are confined spaces and choices have to be made.

Yup.

A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s bid to deprive federal funding from programs that incorporate “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives.

 

U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson ruled that Trump’s policy likely violates the First Amendment because it penalizes private organizations based on their viewpoints. And the judge said the policy is written so vaguely that it chills the free speech of federal contractors concerned they will be punished if they don’t eliminate programs meant to encourage a diverse workforce.

 

Abelson, a Baltimore-based appointee of former President Joe Biden, said longstanding court precedent bars the federal government from “leveraging its funding to restrict federal contractors and grantees from otherwise exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Let’s engage in a simple logic exercise. If the federal government can put DEI requirements into contracts that requires private companies to comply by having DEI programs, then the opposite is equally true. The newly elected federal government can insist that companies that do business with the federal government do not have DEI programs. It does not violate the 1st Amendment because there is nothing that compels a private company to do business with the federal government. Most companies don’t.

He is absolutely correct. There may be some good ones in that group, but it’s impossible to tell which ones. Meanwhile, after the gross misallocation of resources and undeniable political bias of their prosecutorial priorities, they need to go.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining Biden-era U.S. attorneys, asserting that the department had been “politicized like never before.”

 

“We must ‘clean house’ IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence. America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System – THAT BEGINS TODAY,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

FFS

MADISON, Wis. – A Dane County judge struck down on Monday, Dec. 2 parts of Act 10, a Wisconsin law that placed limits on government workers’ unions.

 

The judge already ruled in July that the law broke the Wisconsin Constitution. Now on Dec. 2, 2024, Judge Jacob Frost released his decision laying out what parts of Act 10 should be struck as unconstitutional.

 

“This gets to the heart of the Court’s July Decision –the unconstitutional creation of the “public safety employee” group and differential treatment of it without a rational basis – so I strike these sections,” Frost wrote in the new decision.

I can’t tell you how exhausting I find the prospect of litigating Act 10 again. We did this ten years ago. The law is clearly, unequivocally, irrevocably constitutional and the policy has had a tremendously positive impact on the state.

But none of that matters. The Leftist judges in Madison – especially the ones on the Supreme Court – are going to gut it anyway for brazen political purposes. It is the absolute worst manifestation of a corrupted judicial system that rules to ideological outcomes instead of allegiance to the rule of law.