Federal workers fear layoffs as the government shutdown drags on

With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the Trump administration’s promised layoffs. Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate. “Luckily I was able to pay rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worker. “But for sure I am going to have bills that are going to go unpaid this month, and I really don’t have many options.” The shutdown has a familiar feel for many federal employees who endured past stalemates — including during President Donald Trump’s first term — but this time, the stakes are higher. The Republican White House is leveraging federal workers’ jobs to pressure Democrats to soften their demands. The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and other Republican leaders have said the government must reopen before they will negotiate with Democrats on the health subsidies. Farruggia is the head of the American Federation of Government Employees local representing employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees who have been furloughed from the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online. With the agency’s leadership in turmoil and still rattled from a shooting, the shutdown and new firings mean “people are scared, nervous, anxious, but also really just exasperated,” Farruggia said. After Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said last week on social media that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, Vice President JD Vance doubled down on the threat Sunday, saying “the longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be.” The layoffs have begun across federal agencies. Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the move by Trump’s budget office. National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald, which represents workers across dozens of federal agencies, said several of the union’s members had been laid off as of Friday. The Treasury Department would lose 1,446 workers, according to the filing. Greenwald said it was unfortunate that the Trump administration was using “federal employees as political pawns by furloughing and proposing to fire them all to try to cause pressure in a political game of chicken.” Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 workers nationwide, called on both sides of Congress to find a resolution. He said Trump appeared to aim to “degrade, frighten, antagonize hardworking federal employees.” Chris Bartley, political program coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters, said thousands of firefighters were showing up for work without pay out of a sense of devotion but stressed that could have broader consequences. “Families go without income,” Bartley said. “Morale and retention suffer. Public safety is compromised.”

Government shutdown nears, congressional leaders to meet at White House

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions. If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy. Trump, ahead of the meeting, made it clear he had no intention to negotiate on Democrats’ current terms. “They’re going to have to do some things because their ideas are not very good ones,” the president said Monday. Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats have held firm. They’re using one of their few points of leverage to demand Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits. “We finally got our meeting. We hope they’re serious about getting something real done on health care,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said as he departed the Capitol for the White House. Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week. “If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.” The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in a funding lapse. “Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Still, Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown. Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have subsidized health insurance for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year. At a Monday news conference, Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called health care cuts a “five-alarm fire” that is rippling across communities nationwide. “We’re not going to simply go along to get along with a Republican bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans who are already living with this Trump economy, where costs aren’t going down but they’re going up,” he said. The pandemic-era ACA subsidies are set to expire in a matter of months if Congress fails to act. Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits but want changes. Thune said Sunday that the program is “desperately in need of reform” and Republicans want to address “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later. It remains to be seen whether the White House meeting will help or hurt the chances for a resolution. Negotiations between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders have rarely gone well, and Trump has had little contact with the opposing party during his second term. The most recent negotiation in August between Schumer and the president to speed the pace of Senate confirmation votes for administration officials ended with Trump telling Schumer to “go to hell” in a social media post.

New lawsuit challenges Trump’s federal takeover of DC police department

The nation’s capital challenged President Donald Trump’s takeover of its police department in court on Friday, hours after his administration stepped up its crackdown on policing by naming a federal official as the new emergency head of the department, with all the powers of a police chief. District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a new lawsuit that Trump is going far beyond his power under the law. Schwalb asked a judge to find that control of the department remains in district hands and sought an emergency restraining order. “The administration’s unlawful actions are an affront to the dignity and autonomy of the 700,000 Americans who call D.C. home. This is the gravest threat to Home Rule that the District has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb said. The lawsuit comes after Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday night that Drug Enforcement Administration boss Terry Cole will assume “powers and duties vested in the District of Columbia Chief of Police.” The Metropolitan Police Department “must receive approval from Commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders, Bondi said. It was unclear where the move left the city’s current police chief, Pamela Smith, who works for the mayor. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back, writing on social media that “there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.” Justice Department and White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the district’s lawsuit Friday morning. Schwalb had said late Thursday that Bondi’s directive was “unlawful,” arguing it could not be followed by the city’s police force. He wrote in a memo to Smith that “members of MPD must continue to follow your orders and not the orders of any official not appointed by the Mayor,” setting up the legal clash between the heavily Democratic district and the Republican administration. Bondi’s directive came even after Smith had told MPD officers hours earlier to share information with immigration agencies regarding people not in custody, such as someone involved in a traffic stop or checkpoint. The Justice Department said Bondi disagreed with the police chief’s directive because it allowed for continued enforcement of “sanctuary policies,” which generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers. Bondi said she was rescinding that order as well as other MPD policies limiting inquires into immigration status and preventing arrests based solely on federal immigration warrants. All new directives must now receive approval from Cole, the attorney general said. The police takeover is the latest move by Trump to test the limits of his legal authorities to carry out his agenda, relying on obscure statutes and a supposed state of emergency to bolster his tough-on-crime message and his plans to speed up the mass deportation of people in the U.S. illegally. It also marks one of the most sweeping assertions of federal authority over a local government in modern times. While Washington has grappled with spikes in violence and visible homelessness, the city’s homicide rate ranks below those of several other major U.S. cities and the capital is not in the throes of the public safety collapse the administration has portrayed. A population already tense from days of ramp-up has begun seeing more significant shows of force across the city. National Guard troops watched over some of the world’s most renowned landmarks and Humvees took position in front of the busy main train station. Volunteers helped homeless people leave long-standing encampments — to where was often unclear. Department of Homeland Security police stood outside Nationals Park during a game Thursday between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies. DEA agents patrolled The Wharf, a popular nightlife area, while Secret Service officers were seen in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Bowser, walking a tightrope between the Republican White House and the constituency of her largely Democratic city, was out of town Thursday for a family commitment in Martha’s Vineyard but would be back Friday, her office said. The uptick in visibility of federal forces around the city, including in many high-traffic areas, has been striking to residents going about their lives. Trump has the power to take over federal law enforcement for 30 days before his actions must be reviewed by Congress, though he has said he’ll re-evaluate as that deadline approaches. Officers set up a checkpoint in one of D.C.’s popular nightlife areas, drawing protests. Troops were stationed outside the Union Station transportation hub as the 800 Guard members who have been activated by Trump started in on missions that include monument security, community safety patrols and beautification efforts, the Pentagon said. Troops will assist law enforcement in a variety of roles, including traffic control posts and crowd control, National Guard Major Micah Maxwell said. The Guard members have been trained in de-escalation tactics and crowd control equipment, Maxwell said. National Guard troops are a semi-regular presence in D.C., typically being used during mass public events like the annual July 4 celebration. They have regularly been used in the past for crowd control in and around Metro stations.

Appellate judges question Trump’s authority to impose tariffs without Congress

Appellate court judges expressed broad skepticism Thursday over President Donald Trump’s legal rationale for his most expansive round of tariffs. Members of the 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington appeared unconvinced by the Trump administration’s insistence that the president could impose tariffs without congressional approval, and it hammered its invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to do so. “IEEPA doesn’t even mention the word ‘tariffs’ anywhere,” Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna said, in a sign of the panel’s incredulity to a government attorney’s arguments. Brett Shumate, the attorney representing the Trump administration, acknowledged in the 99-minute hearing “no president has ever read IEEPA this way” but contended it was nonetheless lawful. The 1977 law, signed by President Jimmy Carter, allows the president to seize assets and block transactions during a national emergency. It was first used during the Iran hostage crisis and has since been invoked for a range of global unrest, from the 9/11 attacks to the Syrian civil war.Trump says the country’s trade deficit is so serious that it likewise qualifies for the law’s protection. In sharp exchanges with Shumate, appellate judges questioned that contention, asking whether the law extended to tariffs at all and, if so, whether the levies matched the threat the administration identified. “If the president says there’s a problem with our military readiness,” Chief Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore posited, “and he puts a 20% tax on coffee, that doesn’t seem to necessarily deal with (it).” Shumate said Congress’ passage of IEEPA gave the president “broad and flexible” power to respond to an emergency, but that “the president is not asking for unbounded authority.” But an attorney for the plaintiffs, Neal Katyal, characterized Trump’s maneuver as a “breathtaking” power grab that amounted to saying “the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long as he wants so long as he declares an emergency.” No ruling was issued from the bench. Regardless of what decision the judges’ deliberations bring, the case is widely expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump weighed in on the case on his Truth Social platform, posting: “To all of my great lawyers who have fought so hard to save our Country, good luck in America’s big case today. If our Country was not able to protect itself by using TARIFFS AGAINST TARIFFS, WE WOULD BE “DEAD,” WITH NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL OR SUCCESS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!’' In filings in the case, the Trump administration insists that “a national emergency exists” necessitating its trade policy. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized federal court in New York, was unconvinced, however, ruling in May that Trump exceeded his powers.

Court clears the way for Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs. The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency. The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” Jackson warned of enormous real-world consequences. “This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” she wrote. The high court action continued a remarkable winning streak for Trump, who the justices have allowed to move forward with significant parts of his plan to remake the federal government. The Supreme Court’s intervention so far has been on the frequent emergency appeals the Justice Department has filed objecting to lower-court rulings as improperly intruding on presidential authority. The Republican president has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate for the work, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role. “Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is another definitive victory for the President and his administration. It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go. In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illston’s order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans. Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued. “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement. Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s term: Largely good news for Trump

The Supreme Court has been very good to President Donald Trump lately. Even before he won a new term in the White House, the court eliminated any doubt about whether Trump could appear on presidential ballots, then effectively spared him from having to stand trial before the 2024 election on criminal charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election. That same ruling spelled out a robust view of presidential power that may well have emboldened Trump’s aggressive approach in his second term. In the five months since Trump’s inauguration, the court has been largely deferential to presidential actions, culminating in Friday’s decision to limit the authority of federal judges who have sought to block Trump initiatives through nationwide court orders. The decisions from a court that includes three justices Trump appointed during his first term have provoked a series of scathing dissents from liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They accuse the conservative supermajority of kowtowing to the president and putting the American system of government “in grave jeopardy,” as Jackson wrote Friday. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, author of the opinion limiting nationwide injunctions, responded to Jackson’s “startling line of attack” by noting that she “decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.” To be sure, the court has not ruled uniformly for Trump, including by indefinitely stopping deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador without giving people a reasonable chance to object. That’s where the court deals with cases that are still in their early stages, most often intervening to say whether a judge’s order should be in effect while the case proceeds through the courts. While preliminary, the justices’ decisions can signal where they eventually will come out in the end, months or years from now. Emergency orders are generally overshadowed by decisions the justices issued in the cases they heard arguments between last fall and the spring. Almost since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the court’s emergency docket has been packed with appeals from his administration. For a while, the justices were being asked to weigh in almost once a week as Trump pushed to lift lower court orders slowing his ambitious conservative agenda. Trump scored a series of wins on issues ranging from the revocation of temporary legal protections for immigrants to Elon Musk’s dramatic cost cutting at the Department of Government Efficiency. And that was before Friday’s decision on nationwide injunctions, court orders that prevent a policy from taking effect anywhere. Many of the recent orders are in line with the conservatives’ robust view of executive power. The three liberal justices dissented from each of three cases involving transgender rights or LGBTQ issues more generally. Trump has moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people and the court has rebuffed attempts to stop him. In another emergency appeal, the court’s conservatives allowed a ban to take effect on transgender members of the military, even after lower courts had found the policy unconstitutional. In mid-June, Roberts wrote the opinion for a conservative majority that upheld Tennessee’s ban on certain medical treatment for transgender youth, rejecting arguments that it amounted to unconstitutional discrimination. The decision probably will affect a range of other pending court cases on transgender issues, including those involving access to health care, participation on sports teams and gender markers on birth certificates. On the final day of decisions, the justices ruled in favor of Maryland parents with religious objections who don’t want their children exposed to public school lessons using LGBTQ storybooks. The case was about religious freedom, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “threatens the very essence of public education.”

Supreme Court win for girl with epilepsy expected to make disability lawsuits

A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education. The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent. But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of the country required plaintiffs to show schools used “bad faith or gross misjudgment,” a higher legal standard than most disability discrimination claims. The district, Osseo Area Schools, said that lowering the legal standard could expose the country’s understaffed public schools to more lawsuits if their efforts fall short, even if officials are working in good faith. The family appealed to the Supreme Court, which found that lawsuits against schools should have the same requirements as other disability discrimination claims. Children with disabilities and their parents “face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. The court rebuffed the district’s argument, made late in the appeals process, that all claims over accommodations for people with disabilities should be held to the same higher standard — a potentially major switch that would have been a “five-alarm fire” for the disability rights community, the girl’s lawyers said. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote separately to say he would be willing to consider those arguments at some point in the future, though he didn’t say whether they would win. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, saw it differently. Sotomayor wrote in another concurrence that adopting those higher standards more broadly would “eviscerate the core” of disability discrimination laws. The girl’s attorney Roman Martinez, of Latham & Watkins, called Thursday’s ruling a win for the family and “children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country.” He added that “it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.” Judge blocks plan to allow immigration agents in New York City jail A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case. New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him. Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.” Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ” Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest. Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.” Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety. “New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.

Arizona prosecutors ordered to send fake elector case back to grand jury

Arizona prosecutors pressing the case against Republicans who are accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in President Donald Trump’s favor were dealt a setback when a judge ordered the case be sent back to a grand jury. Arizona’s fake elector case remains alive after Friday’s ruling by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers, but it’s being sent back to the grand jurors to determine whether there’s probable cause that the defendants committed the crimes. The decision, first reported by the Washington Post, centered on the Electoral Count Act, a law that governs the certification of a presidential contest and was part of the defendants’ claims they were acting lawfully. While the law was discussed when the case was presented to the grand jury and the panel asked a witness about the law’s requirements, prosecutors didn’t show the statute’s language to the grand jury, Myers wrote. The judge said a prosecutor has a duty to tell grand jurors all the applicable law and concluded the defendants were denied “a substantial procedural right as guaranteed by Arizona law.” Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat whose office is pressing the case in court, said in a statement that prosecutors will appeal the decision. “We vehemently disagree with the court,” Taylor said. Mel McDonald, a former county judge in metro Phoenix and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, said courts send cases back to grand juries when prosecutors present misleading or incomplete evidence or didn’t properly instruct panel members on the law. “They get granted at times. It’s not often,” said McDonald, who isn’t involved in the case. In all, 18 Republicans were charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy. The defendants consist of 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona, two former Trump aides and five lawyers connected to the former president, including Rudy Giuliani. Two defendants have already resolved their cases, while the others have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator. Most of the defendants in the case also are trying to get a court to dismiss their charges under an Arizona law that bars using baseless legal actions in a bid to silence critics. They argued Mayes tried to use the charges to silence them for their constitutionally protected speech about the 2020 election and actions taken in response to the race’s outcome. Prosecutors said the defendants didn’t have evidence to back up their retaliation claim and that they crossed the line from protected speech to fraud. Eleven people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state in the 2020 election. President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document later was sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored. Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

Court allows Trump ban on transgender military members to take effect

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed. The court acted in the dispute over a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service and could lead to the expulsion of experienced, decorated officers. The court’s three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold. Neither the justices in the majority or dissent explained their votes, which is not uncommon in emergency appeals. Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy in February that gave the military services 30 days to figure out how they would seek out and identify transgender service members to remove them from the force. Those actions had been stalled by the lawsuits. “No More Trans @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X following Tuesday’s Supreme Court order. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth said that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind. “No more pronouns,” he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa. “No more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that s—-.” The Defense Department said Tuesday that officials are currently determining the next steps, but officials were not aware of any actions being taken right away. Three federal judges had ruled against the ban. In the case the justices acted on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, had ruled for seven long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations. A prospective service member also sued. The individual service members who challenged the ban together have amassed more than 70 medals in 115 years of service, their lawyers wrote. The lead plaintiff is Emily Shilling, a Navy commander with nearly 20 years of service, including as a combat pilot who flew 60 missions in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps. Settle imposed a nationwide hold on the policy and a federal appeals court rejected the administration’s emergency plea. The Justice Department then turned to the Supreme Court. The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments last month. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position. In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair. The LGBTQ rights groups Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation called the high court order a devastating blow to dedicated and highly qualified service members.

Judge to weigh Louisiana AG’s challenge to city jail’s ‘sanctuary’ policy

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail. In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies. “The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday. A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30. The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations. As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws. Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment. In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement. The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office. Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.

McMahon says Columbia University’s changes put it on track to recover funding

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Columbia University is “on the right track” toward recovering federal funding after the elite New York City university agreed to implement a host of policy changes demanded by the Trump administration. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, McMahon described “great conversations” with Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong. “She said she knew that this was her responsibility to make sure that children on her campus were safe,” McMahon said. “She wanted to make sure there was no discrimination of any kind. She wanted to address any systemic issues that were identified relative to the antisemitism on campus.” Armstrong announced Friday that the university would put its Middle East studies department under new supervision and overhaul its rules for protests and student discipline. It also agreed to adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand “intellectual diversity” by staffing up its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, according to an outline posted on its website. Earlier this month, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other funding over how the university handled protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. In order to consider restoring those funds and billions more in future grants, federal officials demanded nine separate changes to the university’s academic and security policies. Armstrong’s decision acceding to the administration’s demands drew condemnation from some faculty and free speech groups, who accused the university of caving to President Donald Trump’s largely unprecedented intrusion on academic freedom. Asked whether the university had done enough to secure its funding, McMahon said: “We are on the right track now to make sure the final negotiations to unfreeze that money will be in place.” The Trump administration’s crackdown on Columbia University, where a massive pro-Palestinian protest movement began with a tent encampment last spring, has thrust the campus into crisis and sparked fears of similar actions at colleges across the country. Federal immigration officials on March 8 arrested Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who served as a spokesperson and negotiator for pro-Palestinian demonstrators last year. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, is challenging his detention and potential deportation in court.

Musk gives all federal workers 48 hours to explain what they did last week

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, sparking confusion across key agencies as billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of federal government. Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday. “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Shortly afterward, federal employees — including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials — received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond. The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team injects a new sense of chaos across beleaguered multiple agencies, including the National Weather Service, the State Department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond. Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or offered a buyout — during the first month of Trump’s administration as the White House and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds. There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but The Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others. Labor union leaders quickly condemned the ultimatum and threatened legal action. AFGE President Everett Kelley called the new order an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.” “It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Kelley said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.” Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said, “Waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government. McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies would “determine any next steps.” What happens if an employee is on leave or vacation? Again, she said individual agencies would determine how to proceed. In a message to employees on Saturday night, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond. “We understand that some judges and judiciary staff have received an email ... directing the recipient to reply with 5 accomplishments from the prior week. Please be advised that this email did not originate from the Judiciary or the Administrative Office and we suggest that no action be taken,” officials wrote. Judges around the country got emails from Musk’s team in late January, apparently by mistake, U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said earlier this month. Moss said he’d also gotten a message and ignored it. The National Weather Service leadership acknowledged some confusion in a message to its employees late Saturday as well.

Steve Bannon pleads guilty and avoids jail time in border wall fraud case

Steve Bannon pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, ending a case the conservative strategist decried as a “political persecution.” Spared from jail as part of a plea deal, he left court saying he “felt like a million bucks.” Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in state court in Manhattan to one count of scheme to defraud, a low-level felony. The case involved We Build the Wall, a non-profit that Bannon himself once suspected was a scam. Bannon, 71, must stay out of trouble for three years to avoid additional punishment, including possible jail time. He also can’t raise money or serve as an officer or director for charities in New York and can’t use, sell, or possess any data gathered from border wall donors. Bannon had been scheduled to go to trial March 4. His lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said Bannon wanted to “put up a fight,” but opted to plead guilty after weighing how a jury in heavily Democratic Manhattan might judge him. Under the deal, prosecutors agreed to drop money laundering and conspiracy charges against him. Bannon’s plea deal came just days after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Justice Department to investigate what Trump called the “ weaponization of prosecutorial power.” Outside court, Bannon urged Bondi to immediately open criminal investigations into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted him, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued Trump over his business practices and is leading legal challenges to his administration’s policies. Both are Democrats. Bragg “can call a grand jury at any time” and “set up criminal charges on the most bogus efforts,” Bannon said. He called James the “queen of lawfare” and warned that Trump and his allies “ought to be worried about this out-of-control city.” Bragg and James’ office didn’t immediately respond to Bannon’s comments. Bragg took up the case and charged Bannon with state offenses after Trump cut a federal prosecution short with a pardon in the final hours of his first term in 2021. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses. Bannon was charged with falsely promising donors, including some in New York, that all money given to We Build the Wall would go toward erecting a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Instead, prosecutors alleged the money was used to enrich Bannon and others involved in the project. The campaign, launched in 2018 after Trump fired Bannon as his chief strategist, quickly raised over $20 million and privately built a few miles of fencing along the border. It soon ran into trouble with the International Boundary and Water Commission, came under federal investigation and drew criticism from Trump, the Republican whose policy the charity was founded to support.

A federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s executive order

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order denying U.S. citizenship to the children of parents living in the country illegally, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional” during the first hearing in a multi-state effort challenging the order. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution promises citizenship to those born on U.S. soil, a measure ratified in 1868 to ensure citizenship for former slaves after the Civil War. But in an effort to curb unlawful immigration, Trump issued the executive order just after being sworn in for his second term on Monday. The order would deny citizenship to those born after Feb. 19 whose parents are in the country illegally. It also forbids U.S. agencies from issuing any document or accepting any state document recognizing citizenship for such children.Trump’s order drew immediate legal challenges across the country, with at least five lawsuits being brought by 22 states and a number of immigrants rights groups. A lawsuit brought by Washington, Arizona, Oregon and Illinois was the first to get a hearing. “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour told a Justice Department attorney. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.” Thursday’s decision prevents the Trump administration from taking steps to implement the executive order for 14 days. In the meantime, the parties will submit further arguments about the merits of Trump’s order. Coughenour scheduled a hearing on Feb. 6 to decide whether to block it long term as the case proceeds. Coughenour, 84, a Ronald Reagan appointee who was nominated to the federal bench in 1981, grilled the DOJ attorney, Brett Shumate, asking whether Shumate personally believed the order was constitutional. “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order,” he added. Shumate assured the judge he did — “absolutely.” He said the arguments the Trump administration is making now have never previously been litigated, and that there was no reason to issue a 14-day temporary restraining order when it would expire before the executive order takes effect. The Department of Justice later said in a statement that it will “vigorously defend” the president’s executive order, which it said “correctly interprets the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” “We look forward to presenting a full merits argument to the Court and to the American people, who are desperate to see our Nation’s laws enforced,” the department said. The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to ensure citizenship for former slaves and free African Americans. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Trump’s order asserts that the children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore not entitled to citizenship. Arguing for the states on Thursday, Washington assistant attorney general Lane Polozola called that “absurd,” noting that neither those who have immigrated illegally nor their children are immune from U.S. law. “Are they not subject to the decisions of the immigration courts?” Polozola asked. “Must they not follow the law while they are here?” Polozola also said the restraining order was warranted because, among other reasons, the executive order would immediately start requiring the states to spend millions to revamp health care and benefits systems to reconsider an applicant’s citizenship status.

Americans’ trust in nation’s court system hits record low, survey finds

At a time of heightened political division, Americans’ confidence in their country’s judicial system and courts dropped to a record low of 35% this year, according to a new Gallup poll. The United States saw a sharp drop of 24 percentage points over the last four years, setting the country apart from other wealthy nations where most people on average still express trust in their systems. The results come after a tumultuous period that included the overturning of the nationwide right to abortion, the indictment of former President Donald Trump and the subsequent withdrawal of federal charges, and his attacks on the integrity of the judicial system. The drop wasn’t limited to one end of the political spectrum. Confidence dropped among people who disapproved of the country’s leadership during Joe Biden’s presidency and among those who approved, according to Gallup. The respondents weren’t asked about their party affiliations. It’s become normal for people who disapprove of the country’s leadership to also lose at least some confidence in the court system. Still, the 17-point drop recorded among that group under Biden was precipitous, and the cases filed against Trump were likely factors, Gallup said. Among those who did approve of the country’s leadership, there was an 18-point decline between 2023 and 2024, possibly reflecting dissatisfaction with court rulings favoring Trump, Gallup found. Confidence in the judicial system had been above 60% among that group during the first three years of Biden’s presidency but nosedived this year. Trump had faced four criminal indictments this year, but only a hush-money case in New York ended with a trial and conviction before he won the presidential race. Since then, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases, which pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in all. Other Gallup findings have shown that Democrats’ confidence in the Supreme Court dropped by 25 points between 2021 and 2022, the year the justices overturned constitutional protections for abortion. Their trust climbed a bit, to 34%, in 2023, but dropped again to 24% in 2024. The change comes after a Supreme Court opinion that Trump and other former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution. Trust in the court among Republicans, by contrast, reached 71% in 2024. The judicial system more broadly also lost public confidence more quickly than many other U.S. institutions over the last four years. Confidence in the federal government, for example, also declined to 26%. That was a 20-point drop ? not as steep as the decline in confidence in the courts. The trust drop is also steep compared with other countries around the world. Only a handful of other countries have seen larger drops during a four-year period. They include a 46-point drop in Myanmar during the period that overlapped the return of military rule in 2021, a 35-point drop in Venezuela amid deep economic and political turmoil from 2012 to 2016 and a 28-point drop in Syria in the runup and early years of its civil war. The survey was based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults between June 28 and August 1.

Supreme Court seems likely to uphold a law that could ban TikTok in the US

The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company. Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company’s connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech, either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States. Congressman says TikTok ban would be about reducing risk imposed by foreign adversary Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, on Friday said the Supreme Court had highlighted the fact that the lawmakers were not talking about eliminating speech. “We’re actually reducing the risk imposed by a foreign adversary to manipulate communications and steal data from the American people,” the congressman said. TikTok law was a priority for the Select Committee, formed just two years ago to build bipartisan consensus to identify threats posed by Beijing. Chinese embassy criticizes the US for using state power to ‘suppress’ TikTok The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a statement on Friday criticizing the U.S. government for using state power to suppress TikTok and said Beijing will “take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.” “The U.S. has never found evidence that TikTok threatens U.S. national security, but it has used state power and abused national security reasons to unreasonably suppress it, which is not fair or just at all,” said Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesman. “The U.S. should truly respect the principles of market economy and fair competition, stop unreasonably suppressing companies from other countries, and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for companies from all countries to invest and operate in the U.S.” TikTok content creators who sued the government over the law speak out Creators who spoke at TikTok’s press conference on Friday expressed dismay that the platform they’ve relied on could soon be banned. Paul Tran, co-founder of the skin-care company Love and Pebble, said he and his wife built the company on the app and is hoping for a solution that would protect national security and preserve access to the app. “The First Amendment isn’t a relic of the past. It’s a living promise that must be defended in our digital age,” he said. Memphis cookbook author Chloe Joy Sexton said she joined TikTok when her job fired her because she was pregnant and it allowed her to start her business, Chloe’s Giant Cookies. “I have now shipped thousands of cookies all over the world and even published a cookbook as a small business without a lot of capital,” she said. “I rely almost entirely on TikTok to market my products.” She said no other platform can replace TikTok. “I have tried posting this same exact content on other social media apps without anywhere near the same access, same success.” Mississippi hip-hop artist Christopher Townsend said he started his TikTok account to share his political views and material from the Bible. Without the app, he said he would lose a platform that allows him to share his views in a way that another platform has not. The lawsuit from the content creators was filed last May, shortly after President Joe Biden signed the measure into law. TikTok is covering the legal costs for the lawsuit, which was consolidated with the complaint filed by the company and other challenge brought by a group called BASED politics.