An appellate court handed the Trump administration a small victory Thursday evening by temporarily blocking a lower court’s order that required the government to take steps to return a Venezuelan national it deported to El Salvador.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit gave no explanation for its decision but granted the administration the stay until Thursday. Justice Department attorneys argued to the appellate court that the government legally deported Daniel Lozano Camargo to a terrorist prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump invoked the powerful wartime law in March as a means to bypass routine immigration proceedings and quickly deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua.
A federal judge in Vermont on Friday ordered the Trump administration to release Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk on bail after she was accused of aiding the terrorist group Hamas.
Oturk’s arrest occurred in late March when immigration agents approached her on the street while she was walking with friends outside her home in Somerville, MA. The agents placed her in handcuffs and drove her to Vermont. Afterward, she was transported to a Louisiana prison.
In seeking her release, her lawyers have accused the government of detaining her in unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech. The main evidence against her appears to be an essay critical of Israel that she helped to write in a Tufts student newspaper last year.
Video footage of Ms. Ozturk’s detention went viral, leading to public outrage of her treatment by critics who say the government is abusing the immigration system to deport international students.
Ms. Ozturk has spent six weeks in detention in Louisiana and has endured unsanitary conditions that have triggered increasingly severe asthma attacks, her lawyers said in court documents.
The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk (on a student visa) and Mahmoud Khalil (a green card holder) by masked “officer” using Gestapo-like tactics should concern all Americans. While not citizens, they have rights under the Constitution.
President Donald Trump confirmed late Thursday he was appointing Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia after pulling his controversial nomination of Ed Martin to hold that role permanently.
“Jeanine is incredibly well qualified for this position, and is considered one of the Top District Attorneys in the History of the State of New York, Trump said on Truth Social.
“She is in a class by herself. Congratulations Jeanine!”
NBC News reported earlier Trump was strongly considering Pirro for the position, which oversees criminal prosecutions and civil cases in Washington, D.C., a federal district.
Pirro is the former district attorney for Westchester County, New York.
Just 24 hours after pulling his pick for surgeon general, the president has now announced he will drop Ed Martin’s nomination to serve as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.—the latest collapse in an administration stacked with loyalists and controversy magnets.
“We have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days that will be great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Martin’s nomination had been on life support for days. On Tuesday, New Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis—a key GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee—came out against Martin, citing the nominee’s past defense of Jan. 6 insurrectionists. With Tillis out on Martin, that made a deadlocked 11-11 committee vote likely, with several other Republican senators still uncommitted.
US appeals court blocks Trump’s attempt to revoke legal status of parolees living in US – Jurist.org Source Link Excerpt:
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the US. The ruling follows a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of individual beneficiaries, sponsors of humanitarian parole processes, and affected parolees.
The lawsuit comes after the Trump administration in March revoked the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people residing in the US. The “Keeping Families Together” program, introduced by former president Joe Biden, allowed “certain alien ‘applicants for admission’ to be present in the United States on a temporary, case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” If granted parole, these individuals could apply for adjustment of status “to that of a lawful permanent resident” without having to leave the US.
The initial complaint mentions various groups of individuals—including “Ukrainians seeking safety from the Russian invasion of their country; Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans all fleeing political instability, persecution, and environmental disasters; and Afghans who assisted the United States government during its war in Afghanistan”—hoping to find safety and stability in the US.
A newly declassified U.S. intelligence memo contradicts President Trump’s claims about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), undermining his justification for using the Alien Enemies Act to deport gang members.
A federal appeals court on May 5 rejected the Department of Homeland Security’s bid to stay a lower court ruling that blocked the termination of temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans residing in the United States.
In a ruling, a three-judge panel on the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had not made “a strong showing” that her categorical termination of the immigrants’ temporary parole would likely be sustained on appeal.
The panel also stated that Noem has not demonstrated that the balance of harms and the public interest “weigh so heavily” to warrant a stay of the lower court order.
The decision follows U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s earlier ruling that blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending a Biden-era two-year parole program for immigrants from the four countries.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he told the White House he would not support Ed Martin’s nomination to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Tillis is a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance Martin’s nomination to a full Senate vote.
“Most of my concerns related to January 6th,” Tillis said.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where Jan. 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him. But not in this district,” Tillis continued.
“At this point, I’ve indicated to the White House I wouldn’t support his nomination,” he added.
Attorneys general in 19 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging cuts to the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, saying the Trump administration’s massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia signed onto the complaint.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. restructured the agency in March, eliminating more than 10,000 employees and collapsing 28 agencies under the sprawling HHS umbrella into 15, the attorneys general said. An additional 10,000 employees had already been let go by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to the lawsuit, and combined the cuts stripped 25% of the HHS workforce.
President Donald Trump shared his thoughts on a plot from a group of Republican senators to derail the nomination of Ed Martin, the president’s nominee for the critical position of D.C. U.S. Attorney, in a forceful Truth Social post on Monday night.
Martin was appointed to his current position on January 20, the day Trump was sworn in for his second term. As District Attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin serves a unique role of prosecuting both federal and local crimes in the D.C. area.
His predecessor, Matthew Graves, used the position to arrest hundreds of Trump supporters on non-violent trespassing charges relating to the January 6 Capitol protests, many of whom were sentenced to lengthy federal prison terms on non-violent misdemeanor charges.
Martin’s interim appointment can last for a maximum of 120 days, and is set to end on May 20. If Martin is not confirmed by that date, the authority to appointing a replacement will fall to the fervently anti-Trump U.S. District Court.
President Donald Trump will nominate federal judges “rapidly,” he told The Daily Signal on Sunday night.
“We’re putting them in rapidly and trying to get very good ones, but we need judges that are not going to be demanding trials for every single illegal immigrant,” Trump said on Air Force One. “We have millions of people that have come here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person, that would be millions of trials.”
Trump is off to a slower start in nominating judges than his first term, having only nominated one federal judge, Whitney Hermandorfer, who will serve on the 6th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.
About 100 days into Trump’s first term, the Senate had already confirmed a new Supreme Court justice, Trump had nominated an appeals court judge, and several other prominent judicial nominees were in the queue to be announced within days.
As a number of rulings have come in this afternoon with federal judges blocking several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact via vehicles such as executive orders, here’s a brief roundup of those developments.
A judge blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections. US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with that argument. She also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote. The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters.
Meanwhile, a federal judge said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes. US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
For years, Democrats have wielded the phrase “no one is above the law” like a cudgel, particularly when it suited their political vendettas against Donald Trump and other political opponents.
Of course, they never really meant it. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, and other “allies” are above the law — as are illegal aliens (amazingly).
But never let hypocrisy get in the way of a good talking point, right?
During his first term, they chanted it as they pushed the Russia collusion hoax, impeachment circuses, and endless investigations built on evidence so weak that if I had to choose between standing on a wet paper towel suspended over the Grand Canyon or their evidence, I would choose the paper towel.
When Trump was out of office, their zeal only intensified. New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on a promise to “get” Trump, weaponizing her office to pursue civil fraud cases built on shaky grounds. Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by the Biden Department of Justice, went after Trump with indictments over classified documents and January 6 cases that many legal scholars argued were more about politics than justice.
The left’s mantra was clear: Trump, his supporters, and anyone who dared challenge their narrative must be held accountable, no matter how flimsy the charges or how selective the enforcement.
Democrats might want to rethink making Kilmar Abrego-Garcia the face of their movement if newly released body cam footage is any indication of where things are headed. And to be clear, that’s rhetorical, because it’s absolutely an indication of where things are headed.
For those unfamiliar with the Abrego-Garcia saga, the illegal immigrant was recently deported back to his home country of El Salvador. Because he was sent to CECOT, the Central American nation’s gang prison (mostly made up of MS-13 members), controversy broke out about whether sufficient due process was given. Multiple judges have been involved, and the Trump administration has been ordered to “facilitate” Abrego-Garcia’s return to the United States.
There’s just one problem: El Salvador said no, and since he’s their citizen, the United States has no ability to undo his deportation. That’s left the two sides of the issue in a stalemate.
During Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich discussed what he deemed “dictatorship by judge,” referring to the district courts working to overrule President Donald Trump.
Gingrich suggested Trump revisit former President Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to eliminate courts by repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801.
“You know, Newt, last segment I asked you, what is their program?” host Mark Levin said.
“And I want to catch myself, we know what their program is. It’s the same old thing. It’s American Marxism.”
“I wrote a whole book on it, so they don’t really want to talk about that, do they? They want to go back to what they always go back to. But is that going to work?”
“Well, we don’t have any evidence it’s going to work,” Gingrich replied.
“Look, you have a whole generation growing up, which saw the government lie to it about COVID, and saw the government lie to it about Russia, Russia, Russia; saw the FBI being corrupted, and saw the lies about Afghanistan, etc.”
“So, over in a poll we do at America’s New Majority Project, over 80% of the American people believe the government is corrupt. Now that’s really dangerous in a free society, and what Trump is doing is he’s taking on the corruption.”
