The Court Said No. The Judge Said It Again.
The Supreme Court told the president the 14th Amendment was not a suggestion. Six weeks later, he signed a narrower order and the same judge blocked it, almost as a formality. "The Supreme Court has s…
Tag: courts (52 articles)
Trump Admin Pushes Deal to Sell Part of Yosemite
A 150-year rule of American public land is being broken by a road that isn't even very long. "This is an attack on the American people that own this national park. It would also be unlawful and a cour…
March to Save the Vote. The Map is the War.
Sixty-three years after 200,000 Americans filled the Mall, a fraction of them returned to beg a president and a Supreme Court to stop redrawing the map so they would not count. "Today, we have a presi…
Trump Hyped $3.47 Gas. It May Be Stolen
A president sold the country a miracle at the pump. The miracle, a lawsuit says, was built on fuel someone else didn't get to keep. "KRSM was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such…
Supreme Court Clears Way for Trump Mail Voting Order
The Supreme Court didn't rule that the president can rig the election. It just ruled that the courts have to wait to be allowed to stop him. "This ruling violates well-established precedents concernin…
US Sanctions the ICC’s President. Rights Groups Sue
An American president declares a "national emergency" over a court ruling against one of his allies, and then freezes the bank accounts of the judge who presides over that court. "The US government's …
The Diagnosis That Convicted 44 Innocent Parents
A diagnosis the science has largely abandoned is still deciding who gets to be a parent and who goes to prison, and the country has just watched it die on the record in open court. Danica Rue, executi…
Abbott Won’t Sign. Minnesota Sued.
A Texas governor is sitting on a jail cell full of the answer to a question Minnesota already answered. "Christian Castro is not above the law and Greg Abbott isn't either." — Minnesota Attorney Gener…
The Paperwork Says They Were Building Bombs
The government told the grand jury it never investigates people for thinking. The paperwork it filed in open court says otherwise. "No one is ever investigated or looked at or even researched on for F…
Board Votes to Bolt Trump's Name Back on the Kennedy Center
A president loses a court case over a building, then instructs the same board to bolt his name back on. "This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the court's ruling, and flies in …
DOJ Defies Judge Over Epstein Files, Gets Threatened
A federal judge has lost all patience with a Justice Department that keeps missing deadlines to release files the public was legally promised. "That's not a threat. That's a promise." — Federal Judge …
Trump's CFTC Uses Cold War Powers to Protect Sports Betting
A federal regulator has invoked emergency powers not used since Carter's grain embargo, telling a company to defy a court order, and even the company it is supposed to protect says it is being set up …
Trump Sued for Selling Access to His Own Presidential Posts
trump, corruption, first amendment, truth social The president of the United States is selling advance access to his own official announcements for up to $100,000 a month. "There is no legitimate inte…
President Trump Blocks BBC From His Financial Records
tags: trump, bbc, defamation, courts A sitting president declares an emergency to keep his business empire invisible, and the judge obliges. "It is a transparent effort to evade this Court's clear and…
Trump Lawyer Confirmed as AG, Promises National Abortion Ban
A president's personal lawyer now sits atop the Department of Justice, and his first order of business is to finish what a Supreme Court majority started. "We're working to get solutions so that the D…
Meta Fined $942M: Judge Calls Social Media a Public Nuisance
A judge in New Mexico compared Meta to a factory, with the sexual exploitation of children as its pollution. "For years, Meta knew its platforms were harming New Mexico's kids. It knew that its recomm…
Trump Signs New Orders After Birthright Defeat
The Supreme Court told the president the Constitution does not bend to executive orders. His response was to sign two more. "It's a new world. It's the same Constitution." — Chief Justice John Roberts…
Capital One: Trump's Business Triggered Laundering Review
trump, banking, capital one A major bank has formally told a court that Donald Trump's business generated transaction patterns flagged for possible money laundering. "Documents and Plaintiffs' own all…
A 30-Year Zombie Court Woke Up. Here Is What It Means
The Justice Department has just activated a deportation court that no president in 30 years could bring themselves to use. "They can't engage at all. They can't even know what they're accused of havin…
Federal Judges No Longer Trust the DOJ
The judges who are supposed to trust the government's word are starting to believe that trust is extinct. "I don't think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in …
Sanctioned Trump Lawyer Named Dean of Florida Law School
Florida's public university system found a new way to reward political loyalty: install a lawyer sanctioned by a federal court as dean of a law school. "It looks like politics has superseded merit." —…
Trump Admits in Court He Punished Blue States on Grants
The Trump administration admitted in federal court that it canceled billions in energy grants because the recipient states did not vote for him. "Defendants freely admit that they made grant-terminati…
White House Used Keyword Searches to Kill Research Grants
The federal government admitted in court that it Ctrl+F'd through scientific grants looking for words like "equity" and "racism," then pulled the funding. "Identified the viewpoints they wanted to sup…
Trump Tariff Refunds: Wall Street Gets Rich, Consumers Get Nothing
A Supreme Court ruled that the government illegally collected billions in tariffs, so it has to give the money back. The problem is everyone who actually paid those tariffs gets nothing while Wall Str…
Judge Shatters Trump Article II Firing Theory
The Trump administration believed that Article II of the Constitution gave the president unlimited power to fire any federal worker. A federal judge just told them they were wrong. "For the last 140 y…
Judge Throws Out Trump's $1.8 Billion Slush Fund
A federal judge has declared Trump's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" a legal nullity, calling out the collusive fraud between the White House and its own Justice Department. "Settlements betw…
Rubio Declares War on the ICC. The U.S. Isnt Even a Member.
A country that never joined the International Criminal Court is now threatening to dismantle it, for the simple reason that the court might one day examine crimes committed by its officials. "Sovereig…
Trump Gutted the Election Agency. No One Is Left.
The president fires everyone on the only federal agency dedicated to elections, then cites a Supreme Court ruling that gave him permission to do it. "The Republicans should say, we want to take over. …
DOJ Loses in Court, So It Threatens Election Officials
The Justice Department has been shut out of every courtroom it has entered. So now it is sending threats by mail. "Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingl…
Trump Demands a Supreme Court Do-Over He Knows Will Be Denied
Trump lost his birthright citizenship case at the Supreme Court and his response was to demand a do-over from the same nine people who just told him no. "I will be asking for a Rehearing by the United…
U.S. Sharing Asylum Seeker Data With Iran, Lawsuit Alleges
A country at war with another country is quietly feeding its enemy the names of people who fled it. "Congress made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, a…
ICE's Cash Surge: 10,000 Arrests and Ignored Court Orders
An agency flush with cash is arresting people at courthouses, on the way to soccer games, and while walking to church. Federal judges have told them to stop. ICE has not. "We're witnessing ICE, yet ag…
30 Years For A Box Of Zines: The Prairieland Sentencing
The Trump administration has just made it federal prison time to possess political pamphlets you disagree with. "The punishment must fit the crimes, not the headlines, not the politics, not the fears …
Kavanaugh Gave Congress the Keys to Undo Birthright Citizenship
Brett Kavanaugh voted to block Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, then handed Congress the keys to finish the job. "Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could amend that statut…
He Made $2.2 Billion. He Just Will Not Pay $5 Million.
The Supreme Court gave him everything he wanted, including nearly unlimited power. But $5 million for a jury verdict he lost? That is apparently too much to ask. "Surprisingly, the Supreme Court decli…
Roberts Gives Trump the Government, Keeps the Money
A Supreme Court hands a president absolute power to fire anyone in any agency, then immediately refuses to give him the same power over one institution that controls interest rates. "The result is a P…
Supreme Court Quietly Builds Its Own Army
The branch with no army has begun quietly building one, and the justices would rather you never noticed. "It's often said that the Supreme Court has no army. Yet, with little fanfare, the size of the …
Supreme Court Just Legalized Turning Away Refugees
The Supreme Court just made it legal to turn away people fleeing genocide. The justices called it statutory interpretation. "If the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on…
30 Years for Moving a Box: Prairieland Sentences Shatter Justice
A Texas judge just handed down a sentence longer than any January 6 convict received. "The punishment must fit the crimes, not the headlines, not the politics, not the fears that have been mongered ab…
USPS Threatens to Block Mail Ballots Unless States Hand Over Voter Rolls
A federal judge called it what it was: an unconstitutional power grab dressed up as election security. "The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections." — U.S. Distri…
Life in Prison for Wearing Black: The Prairieland Sentencing
Eight people convicted of terrorism for showing up to an ICE facility on the Fourth of July go before a federal judge today, with some facing decades behind bars for wearing black and holding a megaph…
How SpaceX Took Chinese Money, Then Banned It At The IPO
A company that builds spy satellites for the Pentagon quietly accepted millions from investors in Beijing and Moscow, then barred them from its IPO. "At the end we can just send Yalda to talk to big g…
Trump Holds Kennedy Center Hostage Over His Own Name
A president who illegally renamed a national monument is now holding it hostage over his own ego. "The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, i…
Supreme Court Set to Hand Trump Power to Fire Anyone, Anytime
The Roberts Court is about to hand the president a tool that no American chief executive has ever possessed: the constitutional authority to fire any government worker at will. "This is a choice—an il…
Dark Money Bankrolled the Voting Rights Evisceration
Seven conservative nonprofits that filed Supreme Court briefs to weaken the Voting Rights Act absorbed $105 million in anonymous donations between 2021 and 2024, a sevenfold increase from the prior pe…
DOJ Says Trump Could Bulldoze Statue of Liberty
The Department of Justice told a federal appeals court that if President Trump ordered the Statue of Liberty demolished, no one would have standing to stop him. "So just as long as you move fast enoug…
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired for Sensitive Pentagon Counterterrorism Role
A man who broke into the Capitol to stop an election certification now works in a Pentagon office that plans hostage rescue missions. "I am ashamed because I will always be part of this disgrace. Janu…
Trump's Anti-Weaponization Fund Implodes in Two Weeks
A president sues his own government, drops the lawsuit without a judge ever ruling, then uses the phantom case as justification to hand out $1.776 billion from the Treasury to an undisclosed list of a…
Trump Tried to Criminalize Four Numbers
The Trump administration tried to turn four numbers into a crime. A federal judge said no. "The government seeks to squelch core political speech without any articulable, much less evidentiary, basis …
The Kennedy Center Is Named for Kennedy, Not Trump, Says Federal Judge
A federal judge told a Trump-controlled board that you cannot rename a national monument after yourself. "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it." — U.S. District J…
Hawaii Says Corporations Are Not People. Delaware Lets Them Vote.
A Delaware beach town with 400 residents lets LLCs cast ballots, and a state judge just said that is perfectly constitutional. "What is a 'person?' When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the…
The Ballroom That Saved America: How the DOJ Declared Trump Party Space a National Security Facility
After a man was shot at a White House checkpoint, Trump's Department of Justice ran to court with an emergency filing arguing that his ballroom is a national security facility. "The singular and vital…