Administrative State

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A federal court has blocked the Trump administration from firing 19 intelligence officers assigned to DEI programs.

 

In a 2-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administration’s firings were illegal because they did not allow for an appeal or the opportunity for the 19 intelligence officers to request a reassignment.

The Court further ruled that the Trump administration illegally made the decision based on the anti-DEI executive order signed by President Donald Trump upon entering office rather than “workplace misconduct” or “performance concerns.”

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Key Takeaways

  • A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s restrictions on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, citing violations of free speech rights for borrowers engaging in lawful activities such as supporting immigrants and teaching inclusion.
  • Judge Joun criticized the lack of justification for the rule, which could potentially disqualify borrowers based on vague accusations of illegal activity, asserting that the administration cannot create new criminal prohibitions through rulemaking.
  • The PSLF program, which provides loan forgiveness for government and non-profit workers after ten years of service, has helped over one million borrowers since its inception, while the recent ruling aligns with a broader legal challenge from multiple states and organizations against the administration’s policies.

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The Department of Justice has directed federal prosecutors nationwide to intensify investigations and prosecutions involving birth tourism schemes because the practice exploits the U.S. immigration system through visa fraud and other federal crimes.

In a memorandum issued Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald instructed U.S. attorneys to work with the Department of Homeland Security to make birth tourism cases a higher enforcement priority.

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A closely-divided U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a critical decision on election integrity, jeopardizing the security of American elections and the sovereignty of the nation. In an opinion released Monday morning in Watson v. Republican National Committee (RNC), the court’s narrow majority ruled that mail-in ballots postmarked by election day may still be counted even if received after election day.

“Three federal statutes set the day for the election of Representatives, Senators, and the President,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. At issue is a Mississippi state law allowing ballots received by mail and postmarked by election day to be counted for up to five days after election day. The RNC argued that federal statutes preempt Mississippi’s law and require ballots to be received by election day in order to be counted. Barrett and the majority concluded that the federal statutes “do not” preempt Mississippi’s law.

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During oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the birthplace citizenship case handed down from the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Solicitor General John Sauer observed that “we’re in a new world now … where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”

Four justices would go on to agree with this originalist argument, that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not understand their words to confer citizenship on the offspring of illegal aliens and birth tourists. But Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed Sauer’s point, retorting that while it may be “a new world, it’s the same Constitution.” He clearly thought it was a clever turn of phrase, an impression no doubt bolstered by the fawning media coverage of his remark. Released on Tuesday, his majority opinion takes the same approach to a foundational constitutional question as his cheap potshot at Sauer: he shows little interest in compelling originalist arguments, instead issuing shallow and misapplied but noble-sounding platitudes.

Joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Roberts declared that, if a pregnant foreigner travels to the United States — legally or illegally, for 20 years or 20 minutes — to give birth, the 14th Amendment demands that act be rewarded by granting the child the full privileges of American citizenship. At the center of his argument is an aspirational concept of “allegiance” he grounds in the practices of feudal Europe. Because British subjects “born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign” owed a “tie or duty” to that sovereign, Roberts reasons, the children of foreigners born on American soil must be bound by the same allegiance and thus demanded citizenship.

SCOTUS issued a spate of major rulings at the end of its term. Some rulings favor Americans, while some preserve key aspects of progressive power. In two key rulings, the Supreme Court upheld two key progressive policies, one allows mass-mailer ballot counting after election day and the other preserves “Birthright citizenship.”

SCOTUS also ruled the President can fire executive employees without cause and police must get a warrant to conduct “geofence” searches, or wide searches of cell phone user data within a crime scene area.

Alito Rips Supreme Court Majority in Ruling on Data Privacy www.dailysignal.com
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The Supreme Court narrowed the conditions for law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access someone’s Google Location History data, ruling that it constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

In a case involving Big Tech and a bank robbery, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling Monday that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy with their cellphones. The case involved law enforcement’s access to geolocation data used to convict an alleged bank robber—who made a conditional guilty plea. The justices didn’t divide along traditional ideological lines.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority, joined by the high court’s two other Democrat appointees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as Republican appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

SCOTUS Ruling Allows Mail-In Ballots to Be Counted after Election Day www.westernjournal.com
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EXCERPT:

A closely-divided U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a critical decision on election integrity, jeopardizing the security of American elections and the sovereignty of the nation. In an opinion released Monday morning in Watson v. Republican National Committee (RNC), the court’s narrow majority ruled that mail-in ballots postmarked by election day may still be counted even if received after election day.

“Three federal statutes set the day for the election of Representatives, Senators, and the President,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. At issue is a Mississippi state law allowing ballots received by mail and postmarked by election day to be counted for up to five days after election day. The RNC argued that federal statutes preempt Mississippi’s law and require ballots to be received by election day in order to be counted. Barrett and the majority concluded that the federal statutes “do not” preempt Mississippi’s law.

Roberts’ Argument For Birthplace Citizenship Is Self-Defeating thefederalist.com
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During oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the birthplace citizenship case handed down from the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Solicitor General John Sauer observed that “we’re in a new world now … where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”

Four justices would go on to agree with this originalist argument, that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not understand their words to confer citizenship on the offspring of illegal aliens and birth tourists. But Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed Sauer’s point, retorting that while it may be “a new world, it’s the same Constitution.” He clearly thought it was a clever turn of phrase, an impression no doubt bolstered by the fawning media coverage of his remark. Released on Tuesday, his majority opinion takes the same approach to a foundational constitutional question as his cheap potshot at Sauer: he shows little interest in compelling originalist arguments, instead issuing shallow and misapplied but noble-sounding platitudes.

Joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Roberts declared that, if a pregnant foreigner travels to the United States — legally or illegally, for 20 years or 20 minutes — to give birth, the 14th Amendment demands that act be rewarded by granting the child the full privileges of American citizenship. At the center of his argument is an aspirational concept of “allegiance” he grounds in the practices of feudal Europe. Because British subjects “born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign” owed a “tie or duty” to that sovereign, Roberts reasons, the children of foreigners born on American soil must be bound by the same allegiance and thus demanded citizenship.

Ironically, Roberts’ decision to reward illegal immigration and birth tourism is the surest way to destroy the bonds of allegiance he claims inform his opinion. He uses the term “allegiance” 51 times, emphasizing the mutual duties that British sovereigns and subjects owed each other. But such an argument is irreconcilable with the practice he defends: allowing people with no practice or intention of “allegiance” to the United States to secure citizenship for their children.

American Greatness amgreatness.com
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President Trump praised the Supreme Court in a statement Tuesday, despite the Court’s decision striking down his executive order on Birthright Citizenship. Trump stated on Truth Social “we will work to correct” the decision in Congress, but added “the Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court.”

The president was especially pleased with Monday’s Trump v. Slaughter decision, which gave him the authority to remove Federal Trade commissioners (FTC) at will.

“The biggest and most consequential Decision issued by the Court, by far, is the Slaughter Case, which overturned the very famous Humphrey’s Executor Rule,” Trump said.

This whole concept of “Power” has been fought over for nearly 100 years, going all the way back to Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, where a large slice of his Power was taken away. He fought to regain it, even wanting to “pack the Court,” but was unsuccessful in doing so. This Decision gives tremendous additional Power back to the Presidency, where it belongs. It is an Honor to be the sitting President who, after all these years, WON this very important, and hard fought, Case. We had other good Victories, too, and we also had the Birthright Citizenship loss, which we will work to correct in Congress, but the big SLAUGHTER, was SLAUGHTER. The Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito tore into the court’s majority for imposing a “medieval” rule on “birthright citizenship” that negates the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, days before the 250th anniversary of America’s founding document.

Both justices issued dissenting opinions in Trump v Barbara (2026), in which the court’s 6-3 majority upheld the notion of “birthright citizenship,” that any baby born on U.S. soil—regardless of his parents’ immigration status—is a citizen.

Justice Thomas said the court’s majority in Trump v. Barbera (2026) presented a legal argument that was “not historically accurate.”

“American citizenship, the court says, was based on a medieval English ‘feudal’ principle, according to which each person ‘owed personal service to the lord of the soil’ as his ‘master’—a perpetual servitude that was ‘born with the child and only ended in the grave,’” he summarized. According to the court’s majority, Americans adopted the feudal principle and Congress codified it in the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.

Alito, for his part, cautioned that “before saddling the nation with a medieval rule, we had better be certain the Constitution requires it.”

He warned that the court’s decision confers citizenship on “birth tourists,” the children of women who travel to the United States just to give birth.

Alito also noted

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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that ballots postmarked on or before Election Day but received afterward can be counted by states. “Election day” is now a misnomer because voting and counting go on for many weeks in states like California.

RedState’s Jennifer Oliver O’Connell explains:

A pivotal ruling on the fate of states that collect and count mail-in ballots after election day has been issued. In a 5-4 decision on Watson v. RNC, the Supreme Court of the United States held that federal Election Day statutes do not prohibit states from counting ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterward under state law.

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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has once again proven herself to be an utter embarrassment to the judicial branch and all those who came before her on the court.

Tuesday saw the Supreme Court rule in a 6-3 decision that President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

According to NBC News, Trump’s order, dated Jan. 20, 2025 — his first day in office after being sworn in for his second term — interprets the amendment to mean birthright citizenship extends to children of at least one parent who is a citizen or permanent resident, barring temporary visitors’ or illegal aliens’ children from obtaining citizenship.

Jackson was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the order violated federal law, but not the Constitution. The amendment’s history dates back to Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War.

The intent was to grant citizenship to former slaves, but the majority now say it means anyone who comes into the country by any means whatsoever can give birth to a child who will automatically be, by default, a U.S. citizen.

In her concurring opinion, Brown Jackson decided to invoke the history of the postwar period, but did so in an incredibly cringeworthy manner unbecoming of the highest court in the land.

She wrote, “In the aftermath of the Civil War, those who championed the Fourteenth Amendment — both within and beyond Congress — understood the assignment.

“Their work product used ‘language that transcended race and region,’ and thereby ‘changed and broadened the meaning of freedom for all Americans.’”

If you’re completely confused about what it means when someone “understood the assignment,” you’re not alone. According to Yahoo! Life, “The slang term is a popular way to praise someone who is going above and beyond to do a good job. According to Urban Dictionary, ‘understood the assignment’ means, ‘a phrase used when someone is giving it 110% …Whether it’s what they’re doing, what they’re wearing, someone who is really on top of their s***.’”

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The United States of America, now with 20 percent more benefits than the American Express Platinum Card®.

Legal systems talk about legal doctrine, and the Supreme Court’s opinions in the birthplace citizenship case decided this week kicked off with a discussion of 17th-century English precedent. The discussion between justices is anchored in centuries of history and theory, but it’s mostly not anchored in a more immediate question: When a pregnant “birth tourist” in another country pulls up the website for an American obstetrics clinic that specializes in delivering babies for foreign visitors, what does she think she’s trying to get? What is U.S. citizenship to parents who use a border crossing to obtain it for their children?

 

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020, has built a reputation for careful jurisprudence since joining the Supreme Court. Yet in recent decisions, including a 5-4 ruling on Mississippi’s mail-in ballot rules, she has joined outcomes that challenge core conservative priorities on election integrity and border security.

 

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A lot of people on the right are understandably upset about the Supreme Court’s decision this week upholding birthplace citizenship under the 14th Amendment. It’s easy to see why. All one has to do is read the scathing dissents by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, which expose the flawed reasoning and intellectual dishonesty of the 5-4 majority — a majority that was clearly searching for a specific policy outcome and justifying it under the color of the Constitution.

But let me offer a cautious caveat to the black-pilling. The court’s decision wouldn’t be the catastrophe that it is if we hadn’t just lived through a Democrat administration that demonstrated what a dangerous weapon mass illegal immigration can be in the hands of left-wing ideologues who want to remake America.

There is a plausible world in which birthp

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The Supreme Court’s decision striking down President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order has forced Republicans to rethink how — or whether — they can still achieve one of the administration’s top immigration priorities.

The high court ruled Tuesday in Trump v. Barbara that the president could not use executive authority to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily. While his executive order was invalidated by a 6-3 decision, only a 5-4 majority reached the constitutional question, holding that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship in those circumstances.

That split has sparked debate among Republicans over whether Congress still has any viable path forward to restrict birthright citizenship, or whether only a constitutional amendment could accomplish Trump’s goal.

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The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship ruling today was a full-throated constitutional endorsement that the children of mothers here illegally or temporarily are “citizens at birth.”

No doubts there.

It was conventional wisdom that birthright citizenship would be upheld, but what was so shocking is that it was done on the backs of the three liberal members of the court who stuck together while the so-called conservatives splintered in numerous directions. So on the core constitutional endorsement, it was 5-4 with the majority being the three liberals (Sotomayor, Kagan, KBJ) plus CJ Roberts and Barrett. (Kavanaugh would have found the Trump EO invalid because it conflicted with an immigration statute, but he rejected the constitutional holding.)

Think about it. The three liberals prevailed on ideological core of the single biggest case of this term, one that defines who were are as a nation and whether we have sovereignty or are at the mercy of people who sneak across the border, overstay visas, or are here as birthright tourists.

“Disheartening” and “demoralizing” is how I described it in an appearance on the Tony Katz live stream today, but perhaps “infuriating” would be a better term.

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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop a lower court’s order blocking President Trump from removing a leading Library of Congress official on Tuesday.

The announcement came in the high court’s latest order list, in which the justices denied the Trump administration’s application to stay (“pause”) a September ruling by a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision sought to block the government from firing Shira Perlmutter, who led the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress until her termination in May.

As The Federalist previously reported, “Perlmutter’s dismissal came shortly after Trump removed Obama-appointed Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress. Hayden has been replaced by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is filling the position on an ‘acting’ basis.”

The justices did not provide a reason for the decision. They did, however, note that the denial of the administration’s request “is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.”

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The Alaska Supreme Court has delivered the final blow to Republicans’ efforts to keep a Senate challenger by the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) off the ballot.

In a short order handed down Monday, the court affirmed a ruling from a superior court that Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. must appear on the Aug. 18 primary ballot for U.S. Senate.

‘The only reason he is running is to deceive voters and manipulate Alaska’s election system.’

Haitians and Syrians with Temporary Protection Status had been prevented from being deported by a lower Federal court ruling. That ruling was overturned by SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the decision, “The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ nonconstitutional claims.”

Go Deeper

Judge Strikes Down Trump-Era Courthouse Arrest Policy › American Greatness amgreatness.com
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A federal judge has vacated Trump administration policies that allowed immigration agents to arrest noncitizens at immigration courthouses nationwide.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents may no longer conduct arrests at immigration courts under policies implemented by the administration last year.

Pitts, a Biden appointee, concluded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) failed to provide adequate justification for the changes and described the policies as “arbitrary and capricious.”

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan Blocks Trump Admin’s Voter-Screening Database › American Greatness amgreatness.com
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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from implementing a voter-screening database that combined citizenship records with Social Security information. The ruling argued the effort violated federal privacy protections and resulted in inaccurate information being shared with states.

In a 75-page decision, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan halted the administration’s revised SAVE database, a system developed by the Department of Homeland Security as part of an effort to strengthen election integrity and identify non-citizens on voter rolls.

“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

People On Food Stamps Can Keep Buying Junk With Your Tax Dollars, Obama Judge Rules dailycaller.com
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A federal judge on Monday struck down multiple state pilot programs that restricted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients from using their benefits to buy unhealthy foods.

Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins incorrectly interpreted federal law when approving limits on what SNAP recipients could purchase with their benefits, Politico reported. The ruling impacts such pilot programs in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the outlet.

“With her solicitation and approval of the pilot projects in this case, the Secretary purports to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress,” the ruling says, Politico reported. “Neither the [U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)] nor the states can force this square peg into a round hole to avoid the plain language of the statute and the requirements of 2026(k).”

The USDA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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U.S. District Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz threw out subpoenas against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other officials regarding immigration.

“This course of events- in and of itself-establishes beyond reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws,” wrote Schiltz. “And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.”