Colorado

WASHINGTON — President Trump spent much of last week railing against the courts. The courts, in turn, spent it ruling against him.

While Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where he stared down justices as they questioned his bid to end birthright citizenship, quieter courtrooms across the country were challenging his agenda.

The challenges came in on immigration, on his White House ballroom project, on his own liability in the run-up to Jan. 6.

“Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

By Friday, judges had served him loss after loss, each finding the administration had taken executive authority too far, too fast.

Immigration rulings

On immigration, the keystone of Trump’s policy platform, he faced a number of setbacks.

On Monday, a federal judge in California took a step that would allow a class-action lawsuit against the administration’s handling of certain asylum claims. The case concerns thousands of asylum seekers who had made appointments with immigration officials by using a Biden administration phone app called CBP One.

In many cases, migrants from around the world had waited months in Mexico for their turn to speak with border agents after securing appointments through the app.

Those appointments were suddenly canceled after Trump took office. The judge certified those asylum seekers as a class that can challenge the administration’s action in court.

In a similar case, a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that the administration had unlawfully terminated the temporary legal status of as many as 900,000 immigrants who entered the country after using the phone app. Tens of thousands of those told by the administration to leave the U.S. “immediately” have since left or been deported.

The judge ordered the administration to reinstate the legal status and work authorization of those remaining.

“Today’s ruling is a clear rejection of an administration that has tried to erase lawful status for hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that represented the migrants.

Sanctuary laws

Also Tuesday, a federal judge threw out a Justice Department lawsuit that accused Denver and Colorado of interfering with immigration enforcement and claimed that the city and state’s “sanctuary” laws violated the Constitution.

The ruling found that the federal government had not shown it could override state and local decisions about how to use their own resources. The Constitution, the judge said, does not let Washington commandeer local governments.

“Colorado gets to make a choice: How will our law enforcement operate in Colorado. The federal government, they don’t get to make that choice for us,” Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser said.

Birthright citizenship

The next day, the Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Trump’s claim that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to babies born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily.

Conservative and liberal judges alike questioned the arguments of Solicitor Gen. John Sauer, who represented the administration, saying he relied on “some pretty obscure sources,” including precedents that dated back to Roman law.

Trump, sitting feet from the proceedings, left the Supreme Court building halfway through.

“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” he wrote shortly after departing.

Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration enforcement, wrote on Substack after the Supreme Court hearing that, on immigration policy, there is always a gap between what an administration says it will do and what the government can actually deliver. That gap, he argued, is particularly evident in the second Trump administration.

“The White House has built its political identity around the promise of mass deportation, and the rhetoric has been relentless: record arrests, expanded detention, military flights, the spectacle of enforcement as governance,” Kocher wrote.

“But over the past several days,” he added, “developments from multiple fronts suggests that the operational foundations of the mass deportation campaign are more fragile than the administration would like anyone to believe.”

Defying judicial orders

In some cases, the Trump administration has been undeterred by judicial orders to stop certain practices. In a March ruling unsealed Thursday, a federal judge found that Border Patrol agents had continued making illegal arrests in California’s Central Valley without reasonable suspicion.

The government’s explanations for the arrests, wrote Judge Jennifer Thurston in Fresno, “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations about the relationship between a person’s apparent status as a day laborer and their immigration status.”

White House ballroom

Trump had kicked the week off March 29 by touting his 90,000-square-foot ballroom project, showing designs to reporters on Air Force One.

“I think it’ll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a temporary halt to construction.

Leon stated that the president is the “steward” of the White House, not its “owner,” and ruled that he cannot proceed with such a massive structural change without express authorization from Congress.

In response, Trump raged on Truth Social: “In the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG! Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House.”

His administration filed a motion Friday to block the judge’s ruling.

Jan 6. liability

On the same day, a judge ruled that Trump remains personally liable in a civil lawsuit tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, allowing those claims to move forward.

It is among the most consequential legal threats he faces.

Trump entered the presidency on the heels of a major Supreme Court win that found former presidents have criminal and civil immunity for official acts during their term.

But Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta deemed Trump’s Jan. 6 speech — in which he directed supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” — was a political act, not a presidential one, and therefore not shielded by immunity.

“President Trump has not shown that the speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity,” Mehta wrote.

The week ended with yet another setback for Trump when a federal judge on Friday blocked the administration from forcing universities to submit extensive data on applicants and students to prove they don’t illegally consider race in admissions.

Reading the losses

For Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who has tracked the administration’s legal battles closely, the losing streak had a clear through line.

“It was an awful week for Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s not that the courts are anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot. It’s really that he takes such an aggressive approach to policy making that he runs afoul of existing precedents.”

Taken together, last week’s rulings signaled that the courts are insisting that the president is as accountable for his actions as anyone, and that states have constitutional powers he alone cannot override.

“The Trump administration’s recent court losses illustrate that there is still much that the other branches of government can do — in connection with civil society — to uphold the rule of law and mitigate the harms of the administration’s destructive agenda,” said Monika Langarica, deputy legal director at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

“They are one more reminder,” she added, “that the administration will not always have the last word with respect to its unlawful and unconstitutional actions.”

Former clerk Tina Peters has become a cause celebre for the election denial movement and President Donald Trump.

An appeals court in the state of Colorado has ordered the resentencing of Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of involvement in an election meddling scheme in the United States.

The court overturned Peters’s nine-year prison sentence on Thursday, but not her conviction for helping to tamper with voting machines after the 2020 presidential race.

Her case has become a cause celebre for President Donald Trump and the election denial movement, after it emerged that she was seeking evidence to support Trump’s false claim that his 2020 loss was due to massive fraud.

In Thursday’s decision, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that a lower court had considered Peters’s personal beliefs when deciding upon a punishment, thereby rendering the sentence improper.

“The trial court’s comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing,” the appeals court wrote.

The panel cited comments from Judge Matthew Barrett, who blasted Peters as a “charlatan” promoting “snake oil” claims.

“Her offence was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud,” the appeals court said. “It was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”

Peters was convicted in August 2024 for helping someone from outside the government gain access to the Mesa County election system and make copies.

That person was affiliated with efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss, and the copies they obtained were then shared on social media.

False claims that the 2020 election was marred by massive fraud have been a persistent fixation for Trump and his allies, even after his successful re-election in 2024.

Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his 2020 defeat were the subject of a 2023 criminal indictment brought by former special counsel Jack Smith.

He alleged that Trump led a criminal conspiracy to undermine the election process and rally supporters to overturn the results. Those charges, however, were ultimately dropped when Trump took office again in 2025, as the US Justice Department has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Since his inauguration, Trump has continued to push the claims he won the 2020 race. He has also used his allegations of fraud to demand greater control over the country’s election infrastructure in advance of the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

In December, the president pardoned Peters, even though she was not in federal custody, and the presidential power of pardon does not extend to state crimes.

The appeals court panel confirmed on Thursday that Trump’s pardon had no impact on state offences.

“We have found no instance where the presidential pardon power has been stretched in such a way as to invade an individual state’s sovereignty,” the panel said.

State Governor Jared Polis suggested last month that he could consider clemency for Peters.

DENVER — A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that sought to prove fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced because a judge wrongly punished her for statements protected as free speech.

Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.

Calls for Peters’ release have become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Trump has sought unsuccessfully to pardon Peters and pressured Colorado to set her free.

Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction in a 74-page ruling that rejected the notion that Trump has authority to pardon her state crimes. But they said a lower court judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024.

One of Tina Peters’ lawyers, John Case, said the court’s ruling affirmed the importance of free speech.

“Tina Peters was punished for words that she used to criticize our insecure and illegal voting system,” Case said. “The decision affirms that people are free to speak what they believe in Colorado as well as the rest of the United States of America.”

Case said he would likely ask at resentencing for Peters to receive the approximately 540 days she’s served already. That would allow her to be freed.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who has been considering granting clemency to Peters, praised the court’s decision for rejecting Trump’s pardon but upholding her free speech rights.

“This case has been very challenging and a true test of our resolve as a state to have a fair judicial system, not just for people we agree with but a fair system for Coloradans that we vehemently disagree with,” Polis said in statement.

Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.

She was unapologetic when she was sentenced by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a “charlatan” who had used her position to “peddle snake oil.”

The appeals court found that Barrett violated her rights to free speech by punishing Peters for persistently alleging fraud in the 2020 election. They noted that because Peters is no longer serving as an election clerk, she can no longer engage in the conduct that led to her conviction.

“The trial court obviously erred by imposing sentence at least partially based on Peters’ protected speech,” Judge Ted Tow wrote in Thursday’s ruling.

The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.

Trump has threatened to take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases Peters. In February, Trump said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her.

Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is running for governor, has accused the Trump administration of waging a revenge campaign by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to free Peters.

Weiser said in response to the ruling that the original sentence had been “fair and appropriate.”

“Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk, and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain,” Weiser said in a statement.

The Justice Department inserted itself into Peters’ bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons also tried to get Peters moved to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump in December announced a pardon for Peters.

However, the appeals court judges said they could find no prior example of a president pardoning someone for a state crime. And they rejected her attorney’s claims that Peters actions had been carried out while “defending a federal interest.”

“We have found no instance where the presidential pardon power has been stretched in such a way as to invade an individual state’s sovereignty,” they said, adding that the president’s pardon has “no impact” on the state’s case against Peters.

The Associated Press left messages with the White House for comment.

She was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.

Peters’ lawyers didn’t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.

But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn’t want the information made public.

Slevin and Brown write for the Associated Press.

April 2 (UPI) — A Colorado appeals court on Thursday threw out the sentence of Tina Peters, a former elections clerk, who was convicted in an election data case.

Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison in August 2024 on seven of the 10 counts for which she was charged.

She allowed an unauthorized person to make copies of voting machine hard drives that included classified information. The data from those drives was then leaked online by conspiracy theorists who falsely said it proved President Donald Trump correct in his assertion that the 2020 election was “stolen.”

Trump later pardoned Peters, but Colorado officials said he has no power to do so because she was convicted by the state. He has since pressured Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to pardon her.

The judges of the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that District Judge Matthew Barrett wrongfully used Peters’ beliefs and promotion of election fraud conspiracy theories in his sentencing.

“We reverse her sentence because it was based in part on improper consideration of her exercise of her right to free speech,” the court wrote, sending her case back to the trial judge. Now Barrett must re-sentence Peters without using her beliefs to make the decision, the appeals judges said.

At the sentencing, Barrett said Peters had no remorse and called her a “charlatan” who abused her position to “peddle snake oil.”

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” The Hill reported Barrett said. “You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen.”

In its decision, the appeals court said her beliefs shouldn’t color the sentencing.

“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud. Indeed, under these circumstances, just as her purported beliefs underlying her motive for her actions were not relevant to her defense, the trial court should not have considered those beliefs relevant when imposing sentence.”

The appeals court did not overturn Peters’ conviction and formally said Trump doesn’t have the power to pardon a person for state law offenses.

“The crux of Peters’ argument is that the phrase ‘Offences against the United States’ includes an offense against any of the states in the union,” the court wrote. “We join what appears to us to be every other appellate court that has addressed the issue and reject such an expansive reading of the phrase.”

Peters served as a clerk in Mesa County, Colo., whose county seat is Grand Junction, in western Colorado.

She was convicted on three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.

Afroman has emerged victorious from an invasion of privacy and defamation case filed against him by seven members of Ohio’s Adams County Sheriff’s Office over mocking videos and social media posts the rapper put out after a failed 2022 raid on his home.

“We did it, America! Yeah, we did it! Freedom of speech! Right on! Right on! Yeah! God bless America!” the 51-year-old rapper, born Joseph Foreman, shouted outside the courthouse after the Wednesday evening verdict as supporters rallied behind him. In the clip, under a white fur coat, he was rocking the same American flag shades and red, white and blue suit and tie he had worn on the stand Tuesday.

Four deputies, two sergeants and a detective with the Adams County sheriff filed the lawsuit in March 2023, seeking to reclaim any money the rapper made from what they said was unauthorized use of their likenesses. The group wanted nearly $4 million in damages. Foreman used footage from the raid in videos for songs including “Lemon Pound Cake” to make money to pay for the damage done to his home during the raid, when his front gate was broken down and his front door smashed in.

The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that the posts and videos caused them “humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation” and made it difficult to do their law enforcement work.

At trial, all seven plaintiffs testified about the harassment they had suffered because of the rapper’s music and videos. One, Deputy Lisa Phillips, had her gender identity called into question in Foreman’s videos and social media posts. She cried on the stand as a video suggesting she enjoyed sex with other women was played for the court.

The jury apparently agreed with the argument that the sheriff’s officers were acting in a public capacity during the raid and therefore were not shielded from criticism of their behavior.

“No reasonable person would expect a police officer not to be criticized. They’ve been called names before,” defense lawyer David Osborne said in closing arguments for the rapper and comedian, known for his breakout 2000 hit, “Because I Got High.”

In 2022, the sheriff’s team was acting on a warrant showing probable cause that drugs and drug paraphernalia would be found on the property and alleging that trafficking and kidnapping had happened there. No evidence of a crime was found, and no charges were filed.

Foreman wasn’t home during the raid but was able to see at least part of it via a video recorded by his ex-wife and footage captured on his home security system before law enforcement turned off those cameras. He said on the stand that the raid traumatized his children, who were 10 and 12 at the time.

“The whole raid was a mistake. All of this is their fault,” Foreman testified Tuesday. “If they hadn’t wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn’t be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs, nothing.”

Foreman also defended his right to use the raid footage as fodder for his work.

“After they left, I had the right to kick the can and to do what I had to do to repair the damage they brought to my house. Yes, I did,” he testified. “I have freedom of speech. I’m a rapper. I entertain.”

Foreman discussed his reaction to the lawsuit with local station WCPO Channel 9 in 2023. “From the first 10 seconds, I was offended. I was appalled. I was like ‘What?’ Then I started laughing,” he said. “These guys with their rifles are crying about my comedy songs.”

Meanwhile, as the jury deliberated Wednesday, an entirely different Adams County Sheriff’s Office was feeling online heat linked to the trial: the office in Colorado’s Adams County.

“The Adams County Sheriff’s Office has received a flood of social media comments, DMs, and phone calls about the #Afroman defamation trial,” the Colorado department said on X. “It’s clear this is important to a lot of people. There’s just one small issue: that’s the ACSO in Ohio. We are the ACSO in #Colorado. Different states, same name.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.