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.
(Conservative Treehouse) — The Washington Post (but of course, CIA outlet) is reporting on a downsizing effort within the CIA to eliminate approximately 1,200 jobs. The number represents approximately 5 percent of the workforce, although the actual number of CIA employees is classified (national security, dontchaknow).
Within the report, Director John Ratcliffe is noted as shifting the focus of America’s leading spy agency to use more “human intelligence.” That phrase, “human intelligence,” is IC silo code speak for shifting away from “analysts” (political operatives) and engaging in more factual intelligence information.
According to the report, DNI Tulsi Gabbard has also reduced the employment level within the Director of National Intelligence office by approximately 25 percent (current payroll estimate of 2,000 employees). The general narrative within the WaPo reporting is that “national security” is being compromised by large downsizing of spy agency employment.
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.
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.”
“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.”
Those thirteen words, penned by Justice Samuel Alito on Holy Saturday, represent the first admission by the judiciary that courts too can wrongly flout the law.
Justice Alito’s stark acknowledgement concluded his bullet-point evisceration of the Supreme Court’s “unprecedented” command that President Trump not remove a “putative class of detainees” under the Alien Enemies Act. The Supreme Court had entered that order shortly after midnight after the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) filed an emergency application asking alternatively for an emergency injunction, an immediate administrative injunction, a writ of mandamus, or a stay of removal, to prevent the Trump Administration from removing Venezuelans to El Salvador pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act.
The ACLU’s scattershot request for relief from the Supreme Court came a mere two days after they sued the Trump Administration in a federal court in Texas — and before that court or the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had an opportunity to rule on the request for an injunction barring the removal of any more aliens to El Salvador.
In an attempt to get a lower mortgage rate on a vacation home in Long Boat Key, Florida, one controversial elected prosecutor in a major U.S. city drafted a letter to United Wholesale Mortgage. At closing, the prosecutor signed the application for the $428,400 mortgage and attested to the accuracy of her answers in the application.
She had not lived in Florida as she had claimed. She failed to disclose all her liabilities. She failed to disclose that she was delinquent in paying her federal taxes and that the IRS had a $45,022 tax lien against her. And the gift letter she provided to the mortgage company was also false.
Five months earlier, in an attempt to purchase a rental property in Kissimmee, Florida, the same prosecutor signed an application for a $490,500 mortgage from Cardinal Financial Company. According to the government, the prosecutor made knowingly false statements by not including all of her liabilities in the application, not disclosing the IRS lien or the fact that she was delinquent in paying federal taxes. She also did not disclose that she intended to use it as a rental property, having signed a rental agreement with a management company the week before she signed her closing documents for the loan.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Mary V. Rosado (Democrat) issued a temporary restraining order Monday blocking Mayor Eric Adams and his administration from moving forward with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would have allowed federal immigration agents access to Rikers Island – the city’s most notorious jail complex.
At the heart of the case is Executive Order No. 50, issued by Mayor Adams, which aimed to facilitate cooperation between the New York City Department of Correction and federal law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The agreement was designed to identify and remove dangerous illegal aliens charged with violent crimes – including repeat offenders and gang members – from city custody and turn them over to federal authorities.
But that common-sense initiative has now been derailed by a politically motivated lawsuit filed by the New York City Council, which outrageously argues that allowing ICE to perform its lawful duties violates the city’s sanctuary policies.
A federal appeals court has stepped in and put a temporary halt on contempt proceedings initiated by a Democrat-aligned activist judge against President Donald Trump’s administration.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, is attempting to hold Trump in contempt concerning deportation flights to El Salvador, The Hill reported.
The divided ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit does not address the merits of the administration’s appeal.
However, it stalls Judge Boasberg’s efforts to hold government officials in contempt over the March 15 deportation flights.
Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed by Trump, supported the stay.
Meanwhile, Judge Cornelia Pillard, appointed by Obama, dissented.
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the deportation of two international students in Oregon and ordered the Trump administration to reinstate their visa status.
The decision follows two lawsuits filed by a student at Oregon State University and another at the University of Oregon, who had their F-1 student immigration status terminated by the administration.
U.S. District Judge Michael McShane issued a temporary restraining order preventing the students from being deported and ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to restore their F-1 student records for 14 days, according to the court order.
Both plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon and an immigration law firm. The first student, Aaron Olaf Ortega Gonzalez, is a Mexican national pursuing a doctoral degree in rangeland ecology and management at Oregon State University.
The second student, identified only as Jane Doe, is a British citizen pursuing two master’s degrees at the University of Oregon. The plaintiffs said their student status was revoked “without any notice or meaningful explanation” given by the DHS.
A Democrat judge in New Mexico resigned last month just days after a suspected member of the violent Tren de Aragua gang was arrested at his residence.
On March 3, Judge Jose “Joel” Cano, magistrate of Doña Ana County, sent a letter to various court staff, including 3rd Judicial District Chief Judge Conrad Perea, announcing that he would step down from his seat effective March 21.
“Working with each of you has been a very rewarding experience for which I will remain eternally grateful,” he wrote, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Just three days before Cano sent the resignation letter, on February 28, ICE agents conducted a search warrant on his home in connection with Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Venezuela and suspected TDA gangster who was living there.
Ortega-Lopez broke into the U.S. by scaling a barbed-wire fence near Eagle Pass, Texas, at the height of the Biden border crisis in December 2023, Breitbart reported, citing court documents. He spent three days at a detention facility in South Laredo before he was released because of overcrowding.